Habiba Ibrahim is Professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. She specializes in African American literary and cultural studies, and her work explores how and why present-day social categories, values, and cultural forms come into being. She is the author of two books: *Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism* (2012), and *Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life* (2021). Her work has also appeared in *African American Review*, *American Literary History*, and *Keywords for African American Studies*.