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Original Essays | June 27, 2009

Fran Cannon Slayton: IMG On Wakes and Rum (and Coke)



"Unfortunately, I've been to my fair share of wakes." Continue »
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    When the Whistle Blows

    Fran Cannon Slayton

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The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger

by Cecil Brown

The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger Cover

ISBN13: 9781583942109
ISBN10: 1583942106
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

If you're black you don't need to get at anything. You're already there. You can live right out of your insides. So says the antihero of this legendary novel that reimagines the Bible's prodigal son as a young black man in post-Civil Rights-era America. George Washington--one of his many aliases--is a classic trickster figure, a blend of con artist, deep thinker, and willing object of white women's sexual fantasies. Fed up with life in racist America, he leaves his rural South for Denmark on a curious quest, determined to discover if there is any mother fucker in this despiteful world who ever told himself the truth. In Denmark he spends his days bantering with fellow black expatriates and his nights bedding a series of white women who project their desires on him. Inevitably, these worlds collide, with Washington, aka Anthony Miller, aka Paul Winthrop, aka Mr. Jiveass Nigger, increasingly alienated in a world of opportunists. A return to America after his self-imposed exile promises transformation, but is Washington too far gone? Cecil Brown brings blistering prose, unabashed eroticism, and biting satire to this controversial masterpiece that's as timely today as when it was first published.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Christopher Wright, December 14, 2008 (view all comments by Christopher Wright)
This book is beautifully written, full of anger and sex, blatant truths and subtle descriptions of interpersonal relations. It captures the experience of a person trying to escape his past by making a philosophy and lifestyle out of jive, prevarication, self-imposed exile, promiscuity and drugs. Even more important, "The Life and Times of Mr. Jiveass Nigger" shows how the protagonist gets out of the escapist thinking and behaviors and becomes ready to return to his home country—the site of all of the formative traumas of his life. The sex scenes are potentially distracting—but each contains luminous descriptions of the mental state that carries the participants through these rather fraught encounters, and reads dangerously true about how people with different amounts of power in the world (and different senses of their relationship to racial difference) behave sexually to each other. As George Washington (the protagonist) progresses through the novel, these scenes embody his changing awareness of the women he is involved with—and thus his changing relationship with the world that leads to his decision to return to the United States.

Overall, this is one of the best works of fiction I have read—a truly valuable work.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781583942109
Author:
Brown, Cecil
Publisher:
Frog in Well
Introduction:
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Foreword:
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Subject:
Alternative History
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Historical - General
Subject:
African American men
Publication Date:
June 2008
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
213
Dimensions:
9.00x5.98x.69 in. .80 lbs.

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