Satire of the New Black Renaissance

<p>How do twenty-first century Black satirists rewrite American ideas of race? This book plunges into the New Black Renaissance – a flowering of the 2000s and 2010s African American culture – and argues that its most potent tool is anti-essentialist satire. The study traces what Baratunde Thurston calls “Open-source Blackness” an ethos that prizes individuality inclusivity and remix.</p><p>To map this new terrain this volume offers close readings of three signature works: Percival Everett’s metafictional <i>Erasure</i> Justin Simien’s campus satire <i>Dear White People</i> and Thurston’s own multimedia endeavors – his memoir <i>How to Be Black</i> and the playful software experiments developed under the auspices of his company Cultivated Wit.</p><p>Together these texts show how literature film and technology fracture worn stereotypes and invite broader co-creation of (non-)racial identity. The result is the first sustained academic account of Open-source Blackness – of interest to students and scholars in literary media and cultural studies.</p>