Negrophobia: An Urban Parable: A Novel

Jarring, outrageous images hurtle from nearly every page of this postmodern vivisection of the contemporary African American condition. From the subconscious of Bubbles Brazil, a white teenager smoking a joint in her bathtub, issues a dizzying onslaught of stereotypes, a surreal microcosm of American racism. Using the form of a screenplay, James evokes such characters as zombies, witch doctors, licorice men, disembodied organs, and iron lawn-jockeys, all in a frenzy of blood, filth, drugs and excrement. A huge cast of cultural icons also appears--from Rosa Parks to the Jackson Five, from Jimmy ``JJ'' Walker to Joe Louis, from Malcolm X to Aunt Jemima to Martin Luther King Jr. (``with bloodstained bullet holes in his shirt''). In a gag that typifies James's maniacal irony, the cryogenically mummified corpse of Walt Disney transforms King's famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech into a celebration of genocide. There is imagination and wicked humor in all of this, as well as some piercing insight. But the flow of images is so wild and relentless that it becomes numbing, and its impact is lost. The eschewal of traditional narrative makes the book so filmic that tired readers may deem it unsuited for the page, wishing instead for what would be a spectacular--if technically onerous--movie. (July)