Jordan Calhoun is the Editor in Chief of Lifehacker and author of Piccolo Is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture. He’s been featured in places like The New York Times, Kotaku, The Root, and The AV Club, and his writing has been published in places like Men’s Health, The Atlantic, and Vulture. Find him on Bluesky, Instagram, and Twitch.
Jordan served in the Peace Corps and holds a B.A. in Sociology and Criminal Justice, B.S. in Psychology, and an M.P.A. in Public Policy. He lives in New York City.
Humans Being, by Jordan Calhoun
Jordan published Humans Being for The Atlantic—a year in pop culture, with essays that blended his personal memoir style with a search for deeper meanings in the most popular movies and TV shows of the year.
Piccolo Is Black
Like most Black kids who grew up without diverse representation, Jordan Calhoun learned the skill of assigning race to fictional characters. Piccolo, Panthro, Demona, Ursula...he could recognize a Black character when he saw one. He lived in an all-Black city, went to an all-Black school, and could identify characters whose struggles informed his understanding of the Black experience in America.
Piccolo Is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture chronicles Calhoun’s journey from his childhood in Detroit, Michigan as a Seventh-day Adventist to being transferred to private, predominantly white, deeply religious, Seventh-day Adventist schools. He tells his story through the lens of the pop culture he loved and the common adaptations he made while navigating his religious, non-religious, and racial identities.
Calhoun reminds us that entertainment has value in forming our identities, and that we have something to gain by looking back at our childhood entertainment and pop culture experiences. Part homage to the characters he identified with and loved, part celebration of the pop culture—television, movies, music, video games—that influenced his childhood, Piccolo Is Black: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Pop Culture is an honest, thought-provoking, and often hilarious coming-of-age memoir that celebrates Black identity in America.
Social links
Jordan is on Twitch as ParisTokyoGhoul, and YouTube, Instagram, and Threads @jordanmcalhoun
For speaking, interview requests, or anything else: jordan.m.calhoun@gmail.com