Ali Mazrui defined an American African as one who is usually first or second generation immigrant from Africa to the Americas, who may be a citizen or permanent resident of countries in the Western hemisphere, whose mother tongue is still an African language, who has immediate blood relatives in Africa, who is likely to be still attached to the food culture of his/her African ancestry and who is still likely to bear an African family name, although this is by no means universal. Ali Mazrui's own definition makes he himself the classic example of an American African person, and hence this book, The American African, in which Mazrui's peers explore his life and scholarship spanning over more than half a century.