Reviews

The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness by Kevin Young

slichto3's review

1.0

Terrible and incomprehensible. Honestly, I could only get 50 pages through because it felt like the author was trying to be so clever that he sounded like a moron. If I could discern the meaning in one or two of his sentences, it might have gone further to give some meaning to the book.

ahobbitsreadinglist's review

challenging informative slow-paced

3.5

coffeeandink's review against another edition

Hard to summarize. Dense and ambitious cultural criticism focusing on African American culture, with particular attention to counterfeits, masks, variable personae, and truthful lies. There's quite a bit about how African American writers and musicians did modernism and postmodernism before they were named, and how their work and fantasies of black people were appropriated and incorporated into the work of the white writers of the canon. The focus is mostly on African American works and their centrality to American culture. I particularly liked the bit talking about the elevator as a recurring symbol in African American literature.

It gave me a long list of writers to read, reread, or catch up with.