![]() ![]() Both men are shocked to discover that the next lynching victim will be Zane's darker twin brother, Alonzo "Pinchy" Pinchback. A flashy gambler, Carl has decided to become a writer to impress his fiancee. ![]() When Zane heads to Tupelo, Miss., to cover a breaking story, his equally light-skinned friend Carl insists on accompanying him. An investigative journalist for the Harlem newspaper the New Holland Herald during the early '30s, Pinchback has a light complexion that enables him to report on lynchings, crimes that often went unreported - and unpunished. The birth of Johnson's twins, one of whom is dark-skinned, the other pale and red-haired, sparked the creation of Zane Pinchback. ![]() During the '20s, White posed as a Caucasian to investigate lynching and race riots in the South, which led to the publication of "Rope and Faggot" in 1929. Johnson's childhood fantasy was reawakened in college, when he read about NAACP leader Walter Francis White. ![]() We would 'go Incognegro,' we told ourselves as we ran around, pretending to be race spies in the war against white supremacy." For "Incognegro," his angry graphic novel, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award winner Mat Johnson drew on his experiences as a light-skinned African American growing up in a black neighborhood in Philadelphia during '70s and '80s: "Along with my cousin (half black/half Jewish) I started fantasizing about living in another time, another situation, where my ethnic appearance would be an asset instead of a burden. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |