The landmark comic satire that asks, 'What would happen if all black people in America turned white?'
George S. Schuyler (1895-1977), a satirist, critic, and eminent
African American journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, was born in
Providence, Rhode Island. After a seven-year stint in the army, he
moved to New York City, where he joined the staff of The Messenger,
the official magazine of the Friends of Negro Freedom, a black
socialist group. His writing for The Messenger caught the eye of H.
L. Mencken, who became a mentor figure to Schuyler; Schuyler soon
began writing for Mencken's The American Mercury, as well as The
Nation, The Washington Post, and The Pittsburgh Courier, black
America's most influential newspaper. He became the first black
journalist to attain national prominence and was known for his
controversial opinions. In addition to Black No More, Schuyler
published the novels Slaves Today and Black Empire (originally as a
serial in The Pittsburgh Courier) as well as several novellas and
an autobiography.
Danzy Senna (introduction) is the author of the novels Colored
Television, New People, Symptomatic, and Caucasia, a national
bestseller that won the Stephen Crane Award for Best New Fiction
and the American Library Association's Alex Award and was
translated into nearly a dozen languages. A recipient of the
Whiting Writers Award, Senna is also the author of the memoir Where
Did You Sleep Last Night? and the story collection You Are Free.
She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a professor of English at
the University of Southern California.
Each page unleashes a fusillade of gags and comic sequences,
careening from slapstick to blood bath and back again. . . . To
borrow a line from Schuyler, the plot twists get 'more complicated
than a flapper's past'-and about as fun. . . . Black No More is
unsparing on the madness of racial classification but frank, and
very beautiful, on the lure of racial belonging
*The New York Times*
Extraordinary . . . A satiric tour de force that rips into myths of
white supremacy, black nationalism and the American Dream
*Maureen Corrigan*
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