This was okay? It felt really disjointed in parts and sometimes was hard to follow, but I do think this makes a really important intervention in terms of tracing shifts in identity and identity formation, and the individual chapters in the latter half are mostly pretty good (of special interest: the chapter on language and the chapter on Islam among enslaved African-born folks were both really interesting and cool!) Ultimately I didn't love this, but I do think it does important work. (I'm not an African historian, for the record, which I think really impacted my reading of it, because so much of it was so new. Also the 'conclusion' chapter was absolutely WILD.)