This vibrant and vital work by Nemo Madeleine Sugimoto Martin takes us to the heart of the musical's fandom to explore difficult and essential questions about the constructions of race and racism. Forcing us to pay attention to what we might not want to look at, this urgent unpicking will shape responses in fandom studies and for musical theatre studies for years to come.

Sarah K. Whitfield, Doctoral Programmes Coordinator, Royal College of Music, UK, and editor of Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity

This is a book you will want to teach as soon as you read it. The author does the invaluable service to fans and fan studies scholars of deep-diving into the robust, multi-genre, massively transmedia Les Miz fandom and thoughtfully interrogating the perpetuation of racist representations and attitudes in its transformative works. The case studies model a useful method for tracing the evolution and stubborn persistence of racial bias despite the avowed anti-racist intentions of individual fans. Anyone interested in fandom and race will find value in this research.

Abigail De Kosnik, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley, USA

This is a timely and thought-provoking study that invites us to address how markers of identity are reproduced – as well as reimagined and contested – through the circulation, interpretation, and appropriation of canonical literature. By decolonising both the study and practice of storytelling in its various forms, it endorses the act of 'unsilencing' lost or marginalised experiences that hold emancipatory potential for the future through a tale as beloved and enduring as Hugo's Les Misérables.

Bradley Stephens, Professor of French Literature, University of Bristol, UK