A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR -
BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE - ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE
YEAR
"At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book....
Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of
the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read."
--Shondaland
This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black
movies--from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black
Panther--using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films
themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and
racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and
Showdown.
Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's *The Birth of a Nation--*which
glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster--Wil
Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history,
spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business,
on-screen and behind the scenes.
He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on
the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen:
from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial
relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson
trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films
themselves--including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and
Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing,
12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the
careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary
figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike
Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and
Jordan Peele, among many others.
An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented
history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in
modern America.
