{"product_id":"negrophobia-isbn-9781681373294","title":"Negrophobia","description":"\u003cb\u003eA provocative, raucous dark comedy about race and racism in America, now back in print after twenty-five years\u003cb\u003e and with a new preface by the author.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDarius James’s scabrous, unapologetically raunchy, truly hilarious, and deeply scary \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e is a wild-eyed reckoning with the mutating insanity of American racism.  A screenplay for the mind, a performance on the page, a work of poetry,  a mad mix of genres and styles, a novel in the tradition of William S.  Burroughs and Ishmael Reed that is like no other novel, \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e begins with the blonde bombshell Bubbles Brazil succumbing to a voodoo  spell and entering the inner darkness of her own shiny being. Here  crackheads parade in the guise of Muppets, Muslims beat conga drums,  Negroes have numbers for names, and H. Rap Remus demands the total and  instantaneous extermination of the white race through spontaneous  combustion. By the end of it all, after going on a weird trip for the  ages, Bubbles herself is strangely transformed.\"In this social-media era, when we are more intent than ever on isolating things that offend and outrage, \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia \u003c\/i\u003erevels in its own outrageousness, and thus is more of a tonic now than it was almost three decades ago. It neither blinks nor recoils at the stereotypes, insults, and presumptions that have been used to cage and subdue African American self-esteem, but compels its readers to confront rather than retreat from or smooth over the retro Jim Crow imagery….American literature has seen the ascent of talented young black writers who aren’t willing to settle for parochial or hidebound conceptions of who they are and what they should say…and it’s a fine time to be reminded that crazy, willful acts of hoodoo storytelling such as \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia \u003c\/i\u003ehelped make this renaissance possible.\" —Gene Seymour, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Luridly funny and unsparingly smart, \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e is American arcana of the highest order. And like all truly cool books, destined to forever be ahead of its time.” —Paul Beatty \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Darius James is a great writer.” —Kathy Acker \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I opened James’s book only to topple into hell. In fact, \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e is the black version of American Psycho.” —Dany Laferrière, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I read \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e when I was still in grad school. . . . It was one of those good but rare occasions when I thought there might be one other person in the world that would get what I was doing.” —Kara Walker, \u003ci\u003eDB Artmag\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Comic, manic, and amazing, [\u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e] tells more about  American race relations than all of the walking dead suburban experts,  academics, and think tank whores who tell their fellow suburbanites  about how it feels to be black.\" —Ishmael Reed \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Jarring, outrageous images hurtle from nearly every page of this  postmodern vivisection of the contemporary African American  condition.... There is imagination and wicked humor in all of this, as  well as some piercing insight.\" —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This is a novel of exposure, not solution. Those willing to take the  ride will find language and imagery that provide an understanding of  everything offensive and American. To see Bubbles dragged through the  mire of racial and sexual taboos is to experience the reclamation of the  icons and stereotypes that are the signposts of relations among  Americans. It’s not an altogether pleasant experience. No one who reads \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e is playing in the dark -- just lost in it. The novel, however, is no  more unpleasant an experience than, say, having a police baton swung at  your body, or having a steel-tipped boot kick you a few hundred times  after you’ve been dragged out of your tractor-trailer. With its feet  firmly planted in the satiric tradition of Voltaire Ishmael Reed, John  Kennedy Toole, and Okot p’Bitek, James’s book is both timely and  necessary.\" —Christian Haye, \u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wild, non-stop phantasmagoria...In style, theme, and tone, the work  of performance artist James is somewhat reminiscent of Ishmael Reed or  Amiri Baraka, but his dialog is snappier. The vibrant prose makes for  lively reading. Highly recommended.\" —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\"A pop-schlock phantasmagoria that owes as much to William Burroughs  as it does to S. Clay Wilson. James’s raucous debut is by far the best  novel to emerge from New York’s Lower East Side literary scene.\" —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Darius James is one of the funniest writers in America, and one of  the most serious. His subject is the big one: slavery; his questions are  the big ones: who is slave to what?\" —George Trow\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"Comic strip, sci-fi flick, vaudeville, black-faced minstrel show, and lyrical poem all rolled into one. \u003ci\u003eNegrophobia\u003c\/i\u003e is a funky, raunchy, angry, hilarious nightmare vision of black  culture. A ferocious send-up of African-American stereotypes and white  racism. Darius James bursts into literature with a wild, surrealistic  imagination.\" —Catherine Texier \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Darius James is a dazzling scenarist, a wanton imagist and a nubile  perpetrator of the great felony on new literature. This is a writer of  blazing intensity. Forever may he wave.\" —Joel Rose \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This book is not a novel but a curse which will explode in your mind  and cause your bottom to drop out. Of all the neo-hoodoo cosmogonic  jesters, Darius James proves himself to be the most promising.\" —Steve Cannon\u003cb\u003eDarius James\u003c\/b\u003e (b. 1954) is a writer and spoken-word performance artist. He is also the author of \u003ci\u003eThat’s Blaxploitation!: Roots of the Baadasssss ’Tude (Rated X by an All-Whyte Jury)\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eVoodoo Stew\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eFroggie Chocolate’s Christmas Eve\u003c\/i\u003e. His writing has appeared in multiple publications, including \u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eVibe\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eSpin\u003c\/i\u003e, and he is the co-writer and narrator of the 2012 film \u003ci\u003eThe United States of Hoodoo\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Connecticut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAmy Abugo Ongiri\u003c\/b\u003e is an associate professor and the Jill Beck Director of Film Studies at Lawrence University. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eSpectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic\u003c\/i\u003e and her writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Journal of African American History\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePostmodern Culture\u003c\/i\u003e, and other publications.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302056186085,"sku":"NP9781681373294","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681373294.jpg?v=1767733607","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/negrophobia-isbn-9781681373294","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}