John Jay College Of Criminal Justice | The City University of New York

   

Professor Baz Dreisinger of the English department reviewed Purpose: An Immigrant Story, a memoir about award-winning rapper Wyclef Jean,
for the New York Times Book Review. Click here, to read the review.

Professor Dreisinger is the director of the college’s Prison-to-College Pipeline program. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Columbia University, where she specialized in American and African-American studies. Her book Near Black: White to Black Passing in American Culture was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2008, and was featured in the New York Times Book Review and on National Public Radio. Professor Dreisinger also moonlights as a journalist and critic, writing about Caribbean culture, race-related issues and pop culture for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, Spin, the Wall Street Journal and NPR, among other outlets. Together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Peter Spirer, she produced and wrote the documentaries "Black & Blue: Legends of the Hip-Hop Cop," which investigates the New York Police Department’s monitoring of the hip-hop industry, and "Rhyme & Punishment," about hip-hop and the prison industrial complex. Her current work focuses on prisons, education and restorative justice.