{"id":41259,"date":"2015-06-01T19:35:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T19:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41259"},"modified":"2015-06-01T22:19:21","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T22:19:21","slug":"you-get-a-cookie-for-being-offended-mat-johnson-on-the-fine-art-of-racial-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41259","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou get a cookie for being offended\u201d: Mat Johnson on the fine art of racial satire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou get a cookie for being offended\u201d: Mat Johnson on the fine art of racial satire<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Salon<\/a>
\n2015-05-24<\/p>\n

Laura Miller<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The author of “Pym<\/a>” talks about his new novel, his love-hate relationship with Twitter and being a black nerd<\/em><\/p>\n

Mat Johnson<\/a> is a little apprehensive about his new novel, \u201cLoving Day<\/a>,\u201d a satire of race relations and identity politics set in Philadelphia\u2019s Germantown<\/a> neighborhood. While writing it, he thought, \u201cpeople were going to be pissed off. Black people were going to be pissed off and white people were going to be pissed off, and they were all going to be pissed off for slightly different reasons.\u201d That\u2019s because Johnson\u2019s narrator, Warren Duffy, is \u201cmixed,\u201d the child of a black mother and an Irish-American father; he identifies as black, but his light-colored skin often leads strangers to mistake him for white.<\/p>\n

Warren \u2014 who has failed as a comics artist, comics store owner and husband \u2014 returns to Philly<\/a> from Wales<\/a>, where he\u2019s been hiding out from the conundrum of his own identity. He comes back to sell the decrepit mansion he inherited from his recently deceased father, a partially roofless and entirely creepy 18th-century estate house looming over the surrounding ghetto, a defunct \u201cartifact of rich white folks\u2019 attempt at dynasty.\u201d Once there, he discovers he has a teenage daughter, Tal, the result of a one-night stand with a Jewish classmate. Vowing to do right by her, Warren becomes entangled with the M\u00e9lange Center, an eccentric organization that runs a charter school for mixed-race people who want to claim multiple identities. Warren calls it \u201cMulattopia,\u201d and suspects it of being a cult, but Tal does love that school.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Warren has seen two strange figures darting around corners and into outbuildings on the grounds of his mansion by night. Tal thinks they\u2019re the ghosts of the first interracial couple. Warren is sure they\u2019re just crackheads. Since \u201cLoving Day\u201d is Johnson\u2019s follow-up to his celebrated 2011 novel, \u201cPym<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a brazen fusion of academic satire and two-fisted Arctic adventure yarn \u2014 the truth is likely to be very strange indeed.<\/p>\n

I spoke with Johnson recently about his membership in the tribe of black nerds, his love-hate relationship with Twitter and why humor is an indispensable tool when you\u2019re writing about race…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou get a cookie for being offended\u201d: Mat Johnson on the fine art of racial satire Salon 2015-05-24 Laura Miller The author of “Pym” talks about his new novel, his love-hate relationship with Twitter and being a black nerd Mat Johnson is a little apprehensive about his new novel, \u201cLoving Day,\u201d a satire of race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13743,8,20],"tags":[7449,2355,10962],"class_list":["post-41259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-laura-miller","tag-mat-johnson","tag-salon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}