THIS IS
WHAT I LIVE FOR
An
Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir
Edited by Clarissa Clò
You have landed on the
super-special PRE-ORDER page for THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR: An
Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir
coming to you Fall 2023 from SDSU
Press.
 Amir
Issaa’s compelling memoir is presented here as
a critical bilingual edition. Like a concept
album made of individual tracks all
contributing to a larger collective project,
it brings together students and scholars in a
transnational meditation on hip-hop,
education, and resistance that speaks across
borders and generations!
 THIS IS WHAT I LIVE
FOR
An Afro-Italian Hip-Hop
Memoir
by Amir Issaa
edited by Clarissa Clò
Launching Fall 2023
ISBN: 9781938537721
US: $24.95
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Advance word on
THIS IS WHAT I LIVE FOR:
An Afro-Italian Hip-Hop Memoir
 “Nothing is more hip-hop than an
individual documenting their experiences from
nothing to something and using those writings to
take them all over the world. Amir's book does
just that in an international B-boy stance.”
--Parker Edison, host and
co-creator of The Parker Edison Project
podcast on KPBS Public Media
 “Amir Issaa
reflects with extraordinary maturity and honesty,
pushing himself and others to grow and change
reality. The stakes are high: Italy is increasingly
falling prey to a morbid nostalgia for fascism. With
his voice as an artist with a hybrid identity,
Amir’s work helps reconcile Italy with a new future
and the world of diversity. A beautiful
autobiography, written with courage and sincerity.”
--Amara Lakhous, author
of Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in
Piazza Vittorio, Professor in the Practice,
Italian Studies, Yale University.
 “Amir
Issaa is the hip-hop chronicler of a generation
Italy refuses to recognize. With strength and
tenacity, he narrates his experience growing up as
the son of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother.
This Is What I Live For is a story of Rome in the
‘90s that will be new to most people – a Rome on the
margins where rap is the soundtrack. It is a moving
account that teaches so much. A must-read to keep
forever on your nightstand for whenever you want to
travel beyond stereotypes.”
--Igiaba Scego, author of The
Color Line: A Novel, Beyond Babylon, and Adua
 “When
hip-hop reached Europe in the 1980s, it was quickly
picked up by young Europeans of color, persistently
treated as foreigners, as strangers in their own
countries, within a purportedly colorblind continent
in denial about its pervasive racism. Over the next
decades, the voices of these children of migrants,
Black Europeans, Roma, were instrumental in changing
perceptions of who is European and where the
continent’s future lies. Amir Issaa was among the
pioneers of this movement, and it is a pleasure to
read his recollection of its beginnings in this
careful bilingual edition.”
--Fatima El-Tayeb, Professor
of Ethnicity, Race & Migration and Women’s,
Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University
 “Amir
Issaa’s memoir is the amazing story of a graffiti
and rap artist. It is also a unique account of one
of Rome’s disadvantaged peripheries and of an entire
generation. Amir’s powerful life narrative tells of
immigration and racism and reveals aspects of Rome
that few people have seen. This book is not about
tourists and historical sites. It is the remarkable
story of a brilliant man and of the diverse
community he grew up in. This Is What I Live For is
a must read for anybody interested in Italy and in
transnational Italian, Cultural and Hip-Hop
Studies.”
--Graziella Parati, Paul D.
Paganucci Professor of Italian Literature and
Language, Dartmouth College
 "Too
often, when told by or through unconventional means,
stories fall through the cracks. Yet these are
often the stories that best hold a powerful mirror
to our societies, the ones that help us discover new
meanings or reconstitute old ones. “Inossidabile,”
one of Amir Issaa’s early pieces, tells it all:
culture happens when people meet. For him and
others, hip-hop provides a language of translation
for a diversity of stories. This Is What I Live For,
a bilingual edition of Issaa's memoir, migrates an
important story of cultural dialogue into yet
another linguistic sphere, where it will no doubt
find parallel voices and choral agreement."
--Pasquale Verdicchio,
Professor Emeritus of Italian, University of
California, San Diego
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