Customer Reviews

Angry Black White Boy: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rare is the novel that tackles the serious business of black-white relationships and yet is a damn good read. "Angry Black White Boy'' by Adam Mansbach is such a book. The prose is lyrical, the topic is timely, the humor is abundant, and the plot is riveting. Macon Detornay is a young white man with a love of hip-hop, and something a lot stronger than sympathy for the black cause. He quickly goes from robbing smug and bigoted white men to becoming a media superstar who calls upon whites to begin righting wrongs during a National Day of Apology. What happens on that day? Probably not what you're expecting ... not entirely anyway. This is a highly cinematic story -- I can see a movie in its future -- that thankfully lacks preachiness or one-sidedness: Mansbach is an equal-opportunity mocker. You may not like everything this book has to say, but you won't regret reading it.

Decades after the Sugar Hill gang burst onto the scene with "Rapper's Delight," the proliferation of hip-hop moves forward at a steady pace. ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY is a chronicle of the effects hip-hop has had on America, racial politics, suburban youth, and Macon Detornay as he enters his freshman year at Columbia University.

Macon is a man on a mission to be known as "the downest white boy." For years, he has paid his dues to Black culture and Black folks, earning respect in most circles with his lay-it-on-the-line speeches, innovative poetry, and his hatred for "the man." Nevertheless, Macon isn't content to just be down. He smells a revolution brewing, and he is at its forefront - accidentally on purpose.

Mansbach's story enraptured me with its humor, lilt, and permutation of racial biases, issues, and scope. By creating a character who was totally different from, and almost antithetic to, any other I had ever read about, Mansbach won me over and held me captive in a story I had yet to hear. The writing was unpredictable and almost improvisational, and it fit the plot of this story without overshadowing the central themes and characters. ANGRY BLACK WHITE BOY gleams with brilliance, and I will never forget it. (RAW Rating: 4.5)

Reviewed by CandaceK
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

I just finished reading Angry Black White Boy. It seemed like a good premise, but could have been a lot better. The writing style is so poor, with such tenuous logic, that any points that the author makes about racism are weakened. The characters are two-dimensional and don't behave like real people. They just serve to move the plot from point A to point B. So many of the characters are thin stereotypes that the overall message is diluted. The main character, named Macon, is the "downest" white guy ever. He seems to be an embarrassing alter-ego for the author (who has some hip-hop album reviews on his web site if you want a sample his writing style). Macon is not exactly a hero, but something of an Eminem among black political leaders. Macon's political message is somewhat ambivalent, and it's easy to lose interest in his character halfway through. The ending is ridiculous and ruins the story. Mansbach's overall writing style can be downright embarrassing. He's overly earnest in his attempt at hipness. He often uses bad poetry slam writing full of paens to hip-hop, with cringe-inducing use of words like "pimpstrut" as a verb. The book also includes fictional segments from the memoir of an early negro baseball player, but they're written in a revisionist style that's way out of touch with the writing of that time. It's another fatal error that prevents the book from ringing true. I wanted to like this book, and found some of the observations on racial identity to be very acute, but overall it just doesn't work - not even as a criticism of white people trying to adopt black culture. A writer like Gore Vidal, for example, can write about controversial subjects like this with absurdity and insight, but Adam Mansbach just doesn't succeed. For a better book on racism, skip Angry Black White Boy and just read Richard Wright's book Black Boy instead (or any other classic works on racism from authors who actually know what they're talking about, unlike Mr. Mansbach).

Mansbach's writing style here repeatedly took my breath away. He writes like firecrackers. Well, okay, bad comparison, since I can't write like him. His central character also writes and thinks in an eye-popping hip hop style, and he works great as a protagonist for me. This book gets compared to Native Son a lot, but I think the satire of Invisible Man is the better comparison. Anyone who thinks anything in this book isn't "realistic" is either unhip to how satire works or intent on ignoring the book's message. And what a great message--that whites need to wake up, especially white liberals.

The novel's staging of a national Day of Apology by whites seems at first like something this very white-aware author would approve of, but then he goes on to show why such a day wouldn't actually work: because most whites are so clueless about what their race has to apologize for. There still has to be a whole ton of education going on before such an apology is even worth voicing, let alone accepting. The Times ran a condescending review when this novel came out, accusing the author of using lazy, cliched slang. What a bad reader! I think The Times just didn't want to receive and repeat the author's message, or else just couldn't hear it.

Overall, great novel! Though I have to agree with reviewers below that the author seemed a little bewildered about how to end it.

What a disappointment. I truly enjoyed the first two thirds of this book, but the story dropped off so steeply at the end, that the whole book was spoiled in retrospect.

It was a great concept, and Mansbach deserves praise for creating believable and three-dimensional characters. But as soon as the story moves beyond New York City, grotesque stereotypes emerge.

Macon Detourney was a great character. His imagination is wild, and he tends to interpret the goings-on around him through the lens of TV and popular culture. Unfortunately, the same can be said of Mansbach's relationship to the America outside of New York City. He has seen imagery on TV, but doesn't have the same sense for real and imaginary.

The hip hop writing is great.

Reading "Angry Black White Boy" really gave me hope that people in our society may be able to start, on a broader level, an ongoing dialog about what "whiteness" is and how the issues surrounding whiteness make them feel.
Even though the novel is flawed(I felt the ending was rushed...or was it just the flurry of my own mixed feelings about what happens?), I thought most of the characters were either dead-on portrayals that I recognized bits and pieces of from people I have known, or the ridiculous charicatures the auther obviously intended them to be.
Just for having the balls to write this book, I give Mansbach a five star review.

How great to read a race-based novel that at once asks the serious questions concerning race relations and identifies weaknesses in even the most strident why-can't-we-all-just-get-along supporter. Mansbach has a remarkable way with language, certainly, but it is in the grace notes (his term) where he really shines. He is lyrical but with a style that hammers hard like good hip hop. While it might help to have thick skin while reading this book, Mansbach attacks norms and stereotypes with equal power. A really fine effort by a gifted writer. (Check out his contribution in Brooklyn Noir--another really fine piece of work.)

Angry Black White Boy is hilarious, brilliant, inventive and insightful. This is the American Race Novel, remixed for the hip hop generation, and refocused toward the people who most need a racial education: white folks (of which, for the record, I am one). It's chocked full of allusions, wordplay, layered meanings, samples. But even if you miss all of them, you're in for an intense, wild ride. Satire at its finest.

Angry Black White Boy is a book that could only have been written by an author who grew up with hip hop, who understands it inside and out, and who has thought deeply and self-critically about race, hip hop and whiteness. Not only is this an amazing novel sure to provoke discomfort and dialogue, but Mansbach is a great speaker -- he came to my university recently, and he floored the crowd. He's able to break down so much -- from race to hip hop aesthetics to politics-- and he does it in a way that's both funny and accessible. I f you ever get the chance, I highly recommend seeing him speak.

Mansbach decontructs race, identity, hip hop and much more in this book, with incisiveness, humor and rampant originality. The book has gotten a lot of attention for this, and deservedly so, but what hasn't been discussed as much is how stylistically complex and accomplished Angry Black White Boy is.

Mansbach is operating on a lot of levels here, and his field of reference reflects that. He riffs on everything from Richard Wright (in a lot of ways, this book is almost a companion piece to Native Son), Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka and Ralph Ellison to Kool Keith, Bill Cosby, Tom Wolfe and Ol' Dirty Bastard (who stars in a hilarious dream sequence.) But Mansbach isn't just name-checking -- he weaves ideas and people into his text, comments on them and recontextualizes them with a discipline and inventiveness that's pure hip hop.

This is both a quick, captivating read and a book you can go back to again and again, peeling away layers of meaning. Angry Black White Boy deserves to become a staple of college and even high school curriculi in this country.