Resistance, Dignity, and Pride: African American Artists in Los Angeles

This groundbreaking effort makes a paradigm shift in its systematic analysis of several generations of living artists and their visual representations belonging to the same ethnic and regional community. Von Blum deftly organizes his material around the triatic theme of "Resistance, Dignity, and Pride" to problematize the thematic of this body of artists who nevertheless share overlapping concerns about identity, culture, activism, and all the tragic variables traceable to the trauma of the African diaspora.It is as if Von Blum imagines the cultural and historical perspective of an all black neighborhood in Watts or Compton, forged under conditions of oppressive racial segregation but strategically converted into a communal solidarity that unleashes wave after wave of creative energy.