cover image Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet

Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet

Lisa Nakamura. Routledge, $32.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-415-93837-2

With chapter subtitles such as ""Identity Tourism, Avatars, and Racial Passing in Textual and Graphic Chat Spaces"" and ""Making Race Happen Online,"" Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet shows the tenaciousness of race categories in cyberspace, despite the Web's touring as a raceless utopia. Lisa Nakamura, associate professor of English at Sonoma State University, argues that ""race, as vexed a term as that has come to be, is an indispensable part of the `root' that warrants, anchors and conditions the lives of actual users in cyberspace to the world offline,"" and that only by paying close attention to race's offline vicissitudes will we understand online life.