White Like She

Luther Albert Joyce has had a bum deal in life: divorced, cheated, bankrupt, and black in racist America. Things get worse when an accident at the nuclear plant where he works as a janitor leaves him Toxic Avenger%E2%80%93level deformed and his presumed-dead body is unceremoniously dumped in a river. He gets a second shot at life when his brain is plopped into the body of Louella, a formerly angsty, lily-white, teenage Brooklyn lesbian. This book is full of weirdness and often deeply disturbed characters. An early work for Fingerman (Minimum Wage), it struggles to fully explore the transplanted character aspects, only skimming Luther%E2%80%99s explorations of what it%E2%80%99s like to be white and a woman. His encounters with gender and race often take a backseat to the brain-swapping plots that propel the story forward. The art throughout is wonderfully, thoroughly gritty and sometimes very ugly%E2%80%94every person seems to be shown at a bad angle. This unsympathetic approach adds another layer of anxiety that would not be there with a more average cast. (Dec.)