The works of African American authors and artists are too often
interpreted through the lens of authenticity. They are scrutinized for
"positive" or "negative" representations of Black people and Black
culture or are assumed to communicate some truth about Black identity or
the "Black experience." However, many contemporary Black artists are
creating works that cannot be slotted into such categories. Their art
resists interpretation in terms of conventional racial discourse;
instead, they embrace opacity, uncertainty, and illegibility.
John Brooks examines a range of abstractionist, experimental, and
genre-defying works by Black writers and artists that challenge how
audiences perceive and imagine race. He argues that literature and
visual art that exceed the confines of familiar conceptions of Black
identity can upend received ideas about race and difference. Considering
photography by Roy DeCarava, installation art by Kara Walker, novels by
Percival Everett and Paul Beatty, drama by Suzan-Lori Parks, and poetry
by Robin Coste Lewis, Brooks pinpoints a shared aesthetic sensibility.
In their works, the devices that typically make race feel familiar are
instead used to estrange cultural assumptions about race. Brooks
contends that when artists confound expectations about racial
representation, the resulting disorientation reveals the incoherence of
racial ideologies. By showing how contemporary literature and art ask
audiences to question what they think they know about race, The Racial
Unfamiliar offers a new way to understand African American cultural
production.
