Twenty years ago, Rinaldo Walcott's groundbreaking study of black culture in Canada, Black Like Who?, caused such an uproar upon its publication that Insomniac Press has produced a special 20th anniversary edition. With its incisive readings of hip-hop, film, literature, social unrest, sports, music, and the electronic media, Walcott's book not only assesses the role of Black Canadians in defining Canada, it also argues strenuously against any notion of an essentialist Canadian blackness. As erudite on the issue of American super-critic Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s blindness to Black Canadian realities as he is on the subject of rap music, Walcott's essays are thought-provoking and always controversial in the best sense of the word. They have added and continue to add immeasurably to public debate.
