I know I've waxed rhapsodic about Colson Whitehead's satirical skills in the past. I just finished re-reading Apex Hides the Hurt since I'll be teaching this text next week, and I'm once again struck by Whitehead's spot-on sense of irony when it comes to exploring and explaining race in the 21st century. One of the things that he does in this novel that I really appreciate is that he does not ever tell you when a character is a person of color; instead, he reserves his racial markers for all the white characters in his fictional realm. It's an inversion of what most writers (esp. white writers) do in their fiction, namely leave out the race of all the characters and the main protagonist so that we assume whiteness to be the default, only mentioning someone's race when they are not white.
Anyway, I came across this piece that Whitehead did back in November forNew York Times Op-Ed piece on the postracial world we're all living in. It's a wonderfully satirical and sardonic look at life in the U.S. a year after Barack Obama's historic win and ascendancy into the Presidential office.
I know that there are people who really do believe that race no longer matters. That we are, indeed, experiencing life in a post-racial America. I also have some prime ocean real estate to sell them in Nevada.
Showing posts with label Colson Whitehead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colson Whitehead. Show all posts
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Satire plug: Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is one of my favorite contemporary authors.
[click here for a link to the article where this photo came from, which also gives a five-day summary of Whitehead's meat diet]
Recently, he wrote a satirical piece for The New York Times that is just so spot on. Titled "Visible Man" it chronicles the life of the character "The Guy Who's Where He Is Only Because He's Black."
I have read all of Whitehead's novels (my favorite was Apex Hides the Hurt--again, in the realm of satire it's fantastic). You can also check out his blog for a sampling of his writing style, but definitely check out the New York Times piece. It's a classic.
[click here for a link to the article where this photo came from, which also gives a five-day summary of Whitehead's meat diet]
Recently, he wrote a satirical piece for The New York Times that is just so spot on. Titled "Visible Man" it chronicles the life of the character "The Guy Who's Where He Is Only Because He's Black."
I have read all of Whitehead's novels (my favorite was Apex Hides the Hurt--again, in the realm of satire it's fantastic). You can also check out his blog for a sampling of his writing style, but definitely check out the New York Times piece. It's a classic.
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