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Fanon
A philosopher, psychiatrist, and political activist, Frantz Fanon was a fierce, acute critic of racism and oppression. Born of African descent in Martinique in 1925, Fanon fought in defense of France during World War II but later against France in Algeria’s war for independence. His last book, The Wretched of the Earth , published in 1961, inspired leaders of diverse liberation Steve Biko in South Africa, Che Guevara in Latin America, the Black Panthers in the States. Wideman’s novel is disguised as the project of a contemporary African American novelist,Thomas, who undertakes writing a life of Fanon. The result is an electrifying mix of perspectives, traveling from Manhattan to Paris to Algeria to Pittsburgh. Part whodunit, part screenplay, part love story, Fanon introduces the French film director Jean-Luc Godard to the ailing Mrs. Wideman in Homewood and chases the meaning of Fanon’s legacy through our violent, post-9/11 world, which seems determined to perpetuate the evils Fanon sought to rectify.
Audio CD
First published February 7, 2008
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About the author
John Edgar Wideman
95 books408 followersA widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for Sent for You Yesterday and in 1990 for Philadelphia Fire. In 2000 he won the O. Henry Award for his short story "Weight", published in The Callaloo Journal.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
In March, 2010, he self-published "Briefs," a new collection of microstories, on Lulu.com. Stories from the book have already been selected for the O Henry Prize for 2010 and the Best African-American Fiction 2010 award.
His nonfiction book Brothers and Keepers received a National Book Award. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir Fatheralong was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel The Cattle Killing won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction.
He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers. He currently teaches at Brown University, and he sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.
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December 15, 2017Before I got involved with online book groups my main source of book reviews was the New York Times. Back in 2008 I read a review of this book there and, while the review was probably quickly lost, the impression of the review stuck with me. I had this idea of an author struggling with himself and it just hung around in my head. I never saw any other reference to the book. Years later, in 2011, I was in a Borders, and they still existed (I know, because I documented it), and I stumbled across this book in their bargain books pile and remembered the book review and quickly grabbed it. Then it sat on my book shelves where it quietly collected dust for a number of years. (The NY Times review is available Here.)
I have been looking at my bookshelves lately trying to find some books to actually pull off read. I find this an oddly disappointing process for reasons I haven't been able to figure out. Anyway, this one appealed because I've been thinking about it all these years and it's a nice, little hardcover.
I know very little about Frantz Fanon, a black decorated WWII veteran for France from Martinique who later fought against France for Algeria, and later wrote the pro-violence The Wretched of the Earth, but I did know coming in that this wasn't about him so much as the author using his exploration of Fannon as prop of sorts. Wideman is writing about himself, or maybe about struggling to write about himself, and also about racism.
It's a tough book to read, partially because of Wideman's layers. He tells us he's writing about a fictional Thomas who is struggling to write about Franz Fannon, and who receives a package of a severed head and then Wideman mixes which level is narrating—him, about him, about Thomas, is Thomas narrating? He goes through a large fictional and impossible conversation with film director Jean-Luc Godard, where the text cuts in and out of proposed cinematic scenes. But what really makes this a tough read is Wideman's run-on sentences - apparent scattered thought processes that circle back on themselves and correct, refine or contradict themselves while randomly switching topics and focus and then returning. These are page length convoluted sentences that are difficult to follow and often don't have any clear point.
Then mixed in is Wideman's story about his real-life brother, who is decades into a lifetime prison sentence without parole. Through the difficulty of this book, his visits to his brother with his mother stand out clear and powerful. His brother's words and Wideman's inability to express what his brother is going through, or the costs in time and other, and what this all means and how he feels about it is extremely moving. (He doesn't say so in the book, but wikipedia tells me his brother was involved in some kind of contraband exchange where one person (not him) shot and killed another.)
Anyway, after all that, after all the wondering about this book, my main impression is the struggle to read these long sentences, and how long each page ahead looked as a saw another long sentence with little clear purpose. It's a disappointing book that has probably gone stale. It probably needed to be read in 2008.
I did have two interesting takeaways. The first was the mixed connotations of the severed head Thomas finds himself in possession of. He disposes of it in the East River, bringing up to me an image of Orpheus's severed head floating down a river still singing. It represents Fannon's shortened life and restricted life of black America and of Wideman's brother and of Wideman's own struggling and limits of writing. The other was the sense that maybe this mutilated language was itself an expression of how difficult it is for Wideman to say what he wants to say in the way he wants to say, a concession of his own struggle.
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53. Fanon by John Edgar Wideman
published: 2008
format: 229 page hardcover
acquired: 2011
read: Dec 3-10
rating: 3
I have been looking at my bookshelves lately trying to find some books to actually pull off read. I find this an oddly disappointing process for reasons I haven't been able to figure out. Anyway, this one appealed because I've been thinking about it all these years and it's a nice, little hardcover.
I know very little about Frantz Fanon, a black decorated WWII veteran for France from Martinique who later fought against France for Algeria, and later wrote the pro-violence The Wretched of the Earth, but I did know coming in that this wasn't about him so much as the author using his exploration of Fannon as prop of sorts. Wideman is writing about himself, or maybe about struggling to write about himself, and also about racism.
It's a tough book to read, partially because of Wideman's layers. He tells us he's writing about a fictional Thomas who is struggling to write about Franz Fannon, and who receives a package of a severed head and then Wideman mixes which level is narrating—him, about him, about Thomas, is Thomas narrating? He goes through a large fictional and impossible conversation with film director Jean-Luc Godard, where the text cuts in and out of proposed cinematic scenes. But what really makes this a tough read is Wideman's run-on sentences - apparent scattered thought processes that circle back on themselves and correct, refine or contradict themselves while randomly switching topics and focus and then returning. These are page length convoluted sentences that are difficult to follow and often don't have any clear point.
Then mixed in is Wideman's story about his real-life brother, who is decades into a lifetime prison sentence without parole. Through the difficulty of this book, his visits to his brother with his mother stand out clear and powerful. His brother's words and Wideman's inability to express what his brother is going through, or the costs in time and other, and what this all means and how he feels about it is extremely moving. (He doesn't say so in the book, but wikipedia tells me his brother was involved in some kind of contraband exchange where one person (not him) shot and killed another.)
Anyway, after all that, after all the wondering about this book, my main impression is the struggle to read these long sentences, and how long each page ahead looked as a saw another long sentence with little clear purpose. It's a disappointing book that has probably gone stale. It probably needed to be read in 2008.
I did have two interesting takeaways. The first was the mixed connotations of the severed head Thomas finds himself in possession of. He disposes of it in the East River, bringing up to me an image of Orpheus's severed head floating down a river still singing. It represents Fannon's shortened life and restricted life of black America and of Wideman's brother and of Wideman's own struggling and limits of writing. The other was the sense that maybe this mutilated language was itself an expression of how difficult it is for Wideman to say what he wants to say in the way he wants to say, a concession of his own struggle.
-----------------------------------------------
53. Fanon by John Edgar Wideman
published: 2008
format: 229 page hardcover
acquired: 2011
read: Dec 3-10
rating: 3
June 30, 2016
Moments of lucidity that were quite striking or moving, buried in an overwhelming pile of assholery.
August 1, 2023
This is not a book about Frantz Fanon (1921-1965), but rather autofiction and metafiction, reflections from Wideman on his effort to write about Frantz Fanon. This was disappointing because Frantz Fanon remains a mystery throughout, while its protagonist, Thomas, aka Wideman, take up most of the space of the novel, riffing on words and thought and speaking. At best, there is jazz-like prosody in Wideman's writing:
Maybe it would be more accurate to call this book a prose-poem than a novel. We could bring evidence to argue that Fanon is a kind of anchoring figure for the resistance, or else will to life, that Wideman finds in his incarcerated brother and ailing mother. Both face adversity with dignity, although not with Fanon's political consciousness; Thomas-Wideman seems to have critical consciousness in spades, but doesn't seem to make it available for acting.
Is that of interest? Well, it does give insights into the consciousness of an anxious intellectual. I recognize the feelings. But a well-researched biography of Fanon, with Wideman's critical capacity edited to focus on something beyond himself, could well have been a more significant contribution.
In passages like this, we can appreciate Wideman's rhythmic, confident use of repetition and complex subordination. Even bulky relative clauses and appositives gain energy from a careful, almost syncopated arrangement. It almost doesn't seem to work on the page, but comes out more clearly in the audio recording -- yet another win for the audiobook form.
Since stories, whatever else they may or may not be, are composed of words, let's ratchet back and begin with a more fundamental question — are words more than words. If we're able to answer this question, then perhaps we can go forward, or back if you will, and examine stories as a particular case of words governed by the logic or illogic we uncover after we determine whether or not words are more than words.
Words. There's one. Thomas mimes grabbing it. Gotcha, he says. This specimen, words, will serve as well as any other word to establish (a) the inherent nature of words (b) the emergent capacities of words that might enable them to transcend the qualities defining them as words, in other words, their potential to become more than words. Words. Employing words or any other word to determine what words are and also what they might become limits from the outset the seriousness of this endeavor. Like cronies of the president appointed to investigate the president's conduct. The circularity, the slippery slope of our enterprise this morning girls and boys becomes even more apparent if we pose a parallel question — what is a human being. Who decides who's qualified to serve on that board of inquiry. The dog-chasing-its-own-tail aspect of our investigation can be mitigated, if not entirely overcome, as long as we decide beforehand we won't bite down on our tails if we capture them. We should always be as gentle with ourselves as circumstances allow, especially since no one else in this world, except perhaps good ole Mom, will be gentle and forgiving toward us when we fail, and if we consider those ever-present, nonhuman dimensions of our environment — fire, flood, plague, etc. — in these Last Days, gentleness is obviously a nonexistent concept in whatever wordless language those forces of nature speak. So let's be easy on ourselves.
Gentleness. Remember Mom, remember the tear in the corner of her eye when you do wrong, Thomas. Her gentleness the good news. The bad news, boys and girls, it don't get no better. Huh-uh. So don't make things any harder on yourself than necessary. Words. If you choose to write, words are a necessary evil. And if necessary means no way round it, then we have the answer to our original question: yes. Your stories are more than words. They are evil.
Maybe it would be more accurate to call this book a prose-poem than a novel. We could bring evidence to argue that Fanon is a kind of anchoring figure for the resistance, or else will to life, that Wideman finds in his incarcerated brother and ailing mother. Both face adversity with dignity, although not with Fanon's political consciousness; Thomas-Wideman seems to have critical consciousness in spades, but doesn't seem to make it available for acting.
Is that of interest? Well, it does give insights into the consciousness of an anxious intellectual. I recognize the feelings. But a well-researched biography of Fanon, with Wideman's critical capacity edited to focus on something beyond himself, could well have been a more significant contribution.
July 3, 2013
I've gone back and forth on this one, while reading and thinking about it afterward. It's that kind of book.
Sometimes I thought it was genius. Other times pretentious nonsense. Wideman's fascination with Frantz Fanon is undeniable, and it's his passion that keeps the whole project afloat, even though the majority of the book really has nothing at all to do with Fanon, except perhaps in ways only people who have prior experience with Fanon can truly appreciate. And the biggest problem with that is that I don't think too many people today know who Frantz Fanon is, myself included, except by what Wideman says about him here.
It ends up being a literary experiment first and foremost. Maybe Wideman writes like this all the time, I don't know. But it's a major problem when your passion project can either be interpreted as an intricate study or a hot mess. The author veers in a different direction every few pages. I'm sure there's a good connection to all of it, and I could very nearly follow it, and the point seems to be that Fanon has provoked so many thoughts in Wideman that his mind wanders all over the place in the attempt to cover them.
For instance, there's a nominal fictional character who as far as I can tell is subjected to a situation Fanon himself faced, a head delivered in the mail. Aside from that, this character struggles with the same thing Wideman does, completing a book about Fanon while endless digressions keep him from his task. Wideman writes this character, and he also writes himself doing the same thing. It's really interesting, to a point.
Late in the book Fanon does in fact become the indisputable subject, a character Wideman imagines as he experiences certain developments in his life, not even particularly the major ones but rather the mundane. Should I tell you now who Fanon was and what he accomplished? It's hard to say, because at once Wideman does and doesn't do that himself. You would do as well to research Fanon for yourself, because that's not really the point of the book, but rather, again, Wideman's devotion to the man.
This is a valid form of storytelling, but you've really got to have your best material prepared to pull it off, and I don't think that's the case with Wideman here.
Sometimes I thought it was genius. Other times pretentious nonsense. Wideman's fascination with Frantz Fanon is undeniable, and it's his passion that keeps the whole project afloat, even though the majority of the book really has nothing at all to do with Fanon, except perhaps in ways only people who have prior experience with Fanon can truly appreciate. And the biggest problem with that is that I don't think too many people today know who Frantz Fanon is, myself included, except by what Wideman says about him here.
It ends up being a literary experiment first and foremost. Maybe Wideman writes like this all the time, I don't know. But it's a major problem when your passion project can either be interpreted as an intricate study or a hot mess. The author veers in a different direction every few pages. I'm sure there's a good connection to all of it, and I could very nearly follow it, and the point seems to be that Fanon has provoked so many thoughts in Wideman that his mind wanders all over the place in the attempt to cover them.
For instance, there's a nominal fictional character who as far as I can tell is subjected to a situation Fanon himself faced, a head delivered in the mail. Aside from that, this character struggles with the same thing Wideman does, completing a book about Fanon while endless digressions keep him from his task. Wideman writes this character, and he also writes himself doing the same thing. It's really interesting, to a point.
Late in the book Fanon does in fact become the indisputable subject, a character Wideman imagines as he experiences certain developments in his life, not even particularly the major ones but rather the mundane. Should I tell you now who Fanon was and what he accomplished? It's hard to say, because at once Wideman does and doesn't do that himself. You would do as well to research Fanon for yourself, because that's not really the point of the book, but rather, again, Wideman's devotion to the man.
This is a valid form of storytelling, but you've really got to have your best material prepared to pull it off, and I don't think that's the case with Wideman here.
April 19, 2015
Fanon by John Edgar Wideman is an extraordinary flowing river of thought. Structurally Wideman uses tightly woven layers of prose with no question marks, no quotation marks, little attention to conventional formalities, only an outpouring of ideas, events and personalities with scant attention to time or place. The novel is divided into three parts. The first presents the Thomas/Fanon persona. Thomas (a self-referential reflection of the author) is a writer who has set himself the task of writing a book about Frantz Fanon, author of Wretched of the Earth. Not only does Thomas suffer from writer’s block, at the novel’s opening he is also presented with the dilemma of what to do with a severed head that he has received in a package. The Thomas/Fanon persona morphs into a Wideman/Thomas persona who directly addresses Fanon in the present tense as they discuss questions of language and meaning. The second part is the autobiographical depiction of Wideman in Pittsburgh. His neighborhood of Homewood is presented as a sort of internal colony, in America, but not of America and characterized by violence, despair and fear. In part three the focus is on Fanon and his odyssey through a phantasmal swirl: the old world and the new, Breton’s slave ships, a snow/death bed, savannah soccer, Fanon’s supply route in Algeria, the one-body image, the family cemetery. Perhaps Wideman’s starting point was a quote from Fanon when he said his “writing was about how some groups of people rule other groups of people by transforming those others into phantoms.”
October 21, 2008
i really wanted to like this book as i love john edgar wideman. i just couldn't get into the storyline. it felt too fractured to follow. i am half way through and i've decided to give up. i feel with the title of fanon i should know more about this activist, but i really don't. it makes me curious to read a biography or works of fanon, but not to finish this particular novel. i also felt that the long-flowing sentences and often times grammatically incorrect english became a distraction.
October 15, 2019
Loved this book until Wideman slipshodedly (on purpose) threw the severed head into the river, said "fuck it", and then proceeded to ramble on for the rest of the novel.
I took away one star because I'm pretty sure Wideman was using this exchange with his brother in prison as a way to call me a dumb motherfucker:
"Anyway, real smart motherfuckers don't listen to nobody nohow. They know better. Busy wit their own scheming. And dumb motherfuckers don't understand shit even if they standing ass-deep in it. So when I think about it, big bro, I give you credit for being an intelligent guy, but, you know, I got to wonder if writing an intelligent book's an intelligent idea."
I took away one star because I'm pretty sure Wideman was using this exchange with his brother in prison as a way to call me a dumb motherfucker:
"Anyway, real smart motherfuckers don't listen to nobody nohow. They know better. Busy wit their own scheming. And dumb motherfuckers don't understand shit even if they standing ass-deep in it. So when I think about it, big bro, I give you credit for being an intelligent guy, but, you know, I got to wonder if writing an intelligent book's an intelligent idea."
August 4, 2009
I can't belive this dud used Fanon as a pretext to write a stream of conscience
soliloquy about the( mostly) boring minutia of his own( Wideman) life and when he does actually focus on Fanon its all most just as useless information. Seriously this book represents the hight of arrogance. Dear Wideman, you are no
Cormac McCarthy, let alone
Faulkner. And the fact that you have a smiling picture of yourself on the back cover of his novel makes the insult to the reader worse because we actually have to look at your smiling face while realizing that this book was not going to get better
soliloquy about the( mostly) boring minutia of his own( Wideman) life and when he does actually focus on Fanon its all most just as useless information. Seriously this book represents the hight of arrogance. Dear Wideman, you are no
Cormac McCarthy, let alone
Faulkner. And the fact that you have a smiling picture of yourself on the back cover of his novel makes the insult to the reader worse because we actually have to look at your smiling face while realizing that this book was not going to get better
September 20, 2024
Another "currently reading" book I'm clearing off the shelf from years ago (pre-COVID, back when I was still active in BLM), recommended by a friend of Tommy Curry's. Just a bunch of pomo nonsense. Featuring scenes with the author musing about a book he's writing called, you guessed it, Fanon. Featuring scenes of public readings the author is performing of a book he's writing called, yes that's right, Fanon. It's so META. And of course as expected at the end of the book the author can't help but denounce Stalin as a dictator responsible for the deaths of "10s of millions", a ridiculous CIA-funded myth. Oh how edgy and anti-establishment all your pomo writings are. Give me a break.
February 17, 2019
This book is not about Frantz Fanon, unfortunately. It's all about the author's rambling thoughts, memories, digressions and who knows what. The very serious M. Fanon deserved better.
August 17, 2019
What an odd book.
April 19, 2020
Compelling. Similar to Philadelphia Fire in structure, tone, and in references to The Tempest.
December 1, 2021
What do pork rinds and colonialism have in common? Read this book to find out! A noteworthy read.
Read
February 5, 2009Reviewers' reactions to Fanon seemed largely based on their willingness to go along with Wideman's postmodern experimentations and to be swallowed up by his labyrinthine prose. Critics who expected a more straightforward biography of the fascinating, but often overlooked, radical Frantz Fanon were inevitably disappointed, and more than one reviewer accused Wideman of indulging in a tedious level of self-reflection. However, reviewers who were willing to take the historical figure of Fanon as a mere jumping-off point for Wideman's ruminations on the nature of mortality, human experience, and storytelling found the ride a rewarding one, and nearly all reviewers agreed that the scenes featuring the narrator's interactions with his incarcerated brother, Rob, and his ailing mother were exceptionally touching and effective
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
January 4, 2013
...wasn't able to successfully navigate the disjointed structure of the novel...
I can't say that I was particularly knowledgeable about Frantz Fanon at the outset of the novel beyond what I had tried to read to give myself sufficient background for the novel. I can't say that I am more knowledgeable now. I'm not sure that the goal of the novel was to make me more knowledgeable anyway!!
When reading a review of a book and deciding whether or not to read it, it is sometimes wise to stick to more sure horizons and not always being concerned with expanding them. This was a mistake by ME in this case!!
I can't say that I was particularly knowledgeable about Frantz Fanon at the outset of the novel beyond what I had tried to read to give myself sufficient background for the novel. I can't say that I am more knowledgeable now. I'm not sure that the goal of the novel was to make me more knowledgeable anyway!!
When reading a review of a book and deciding whether or not to read it, it is sometimes wise to stick to more sure horizons and not always being concerned with expanding them. This was a mistake by ME in this case!!
February 13, 2014
I did the audio version of Fanon that features Dion Graham as the reader.
This is definitely an audio book that I am going to have to listen to again. Dion Graham does a top notch job of reading the work but the plot takes a while to connect in a manner in which the dual story line makes sense.
I like the rhythm of Wideman's writing in this story. This is a book that is lyrical but also down to earth as it moves along.
Would I recommend the book? Yes. I think that if you can latch onto the story line and follow its dips, curves and moments of what appears to be total moments of sheer chaos, you'll find this to be an informative work.
This is definitely an audio book that I am going to have to listen to again. Dion Graham does a top notch job of reading the work but the plot takes a while to connect in a manner in which the dual story line makes sense.
I like the rhythm of Wideman's writing in this story. This is a book that is lyrical but also down to earth as it moves along.
Would I recommend the book? Yes. I think that if you can latch onto the story line and follow its dips, curves and moments of what appears to be total moments of sheer chaos, you'll find this to be an informative work.
July 4, 2008
i'm returning this to the library unfinished. the writing is breathtaking, but i don't have the head for the rigors of experimental fiction right now. entirely my fault.
i am half-way through and there is way too little fanon. i was hoping for tons of fanon. some scenes are priceless, though. god, ALL scenes are priceless, but the scene in which the writer-persona visits his brother in jail with their ailing mother is excellent, and, also, hilarious. i promise i'll finish this book. hear, mr. wideman? there are people who read your books!!!
i am half-way through and there is way too little fanon. i was hoping for tons of fanon. some scenes are priceless, though. god, ALL scenes are priceless, but the scene in which the writer-persona visits his brother in jail with their ailing mother is excellent, and, also, hilarious. i promise i'll finish this book. hear, mr. wideman? there are people who read your books!!!
May 19, 2008
I did not especially care for this book. My inner literary critic is undeveloped (probably for the better), so there's undoubtedly a lot of stuff going on here that I missed, but aside from a few choice lines (the section about his brother's prison sentence had the most heart) I felt it's stylistically all too playful for the subject at hand.
December 23, 2009
non linear, hard to read, but very educational and groundbreaking in genre and beautiful on a sentence level. only read it if you have an interest in the conflation of author/narrator/reader/character or fanon or non-linear story telling or severed heads being shipped to you in the mail as a reminder of injustice in the world.
July 3, 2008
Wideman's written better--Philadelphia Fire, Brothers & Keepers--but still worth reading.
Read
January 3, 2009Luke read Fanon for one of his classes in Fall 2008, so I was interested in this book, but it's just not my thing -- too theoretical and "male" for me.
November 30, 2009
This book is so trippy I still really couldn't tell you what it was about. It's about Fanon, and then it's not at all about Fanon. Go read it.
April 22, 2010
I wanted to eat this book. So beautiful. But if you're the sort of reader that needs, um, a plot, this may not be a wise choice for you.
July 29, 2011
It's definitely a thought provoking treatise on racial tensions today; and speaks much about the impact of Fanon's stances of equal justice.
November 11, 2012
A book that attempts to break out of its confining pages.
July 21, 2014
juicily poetic and rich. great stuff.
June 15, 2015
Yeah, I'm not into it. Fanon's influence is too much, too disparately distributed here to leave anything coherent that I could make out.
July 7, 2015
Feel like I needed to know more about Fanon's real life to appreciate this more. Final scene nicely written, but its true impact slightly lost on me until I read the postscript.
August 2, 2008
What's the deal with the head?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews