{"id":41325,"date":"2015-06-08T01:06:14","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T01:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41325"},"modified":"2015-06-08T01:06:45","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T01:06:45","slug":"review-mat-johnsons-loving-day-takes-a-satirical-slant-on-racial-identities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41325","title":{"rendered":"Review: Mat Johnson\u2019s \u2018Loving Day\u2019 Takes a Satirical Slant on Racial Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review: Mat Johnson\u2019s \u2018Loving Day\u2019 Takes a Satirical Slant on Racial Identities<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2015-05-26<\/p>\n

Dwight Garner<\/strong><\/a>, Senior writer and book critic<\/p>\n

Mat Johnson\u2019s<\/a> new novel, \u201cLoving Day<\/a>,\u201d takes its title from an unofficial holiday, one his narrator likens to \u201cMulatto Christmas.\u201d It\u2019s the observance of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia<\/a><\/em>, which in 1967 decriminalized interracial marriage in America.<\/p>\n

Mr. Johnson, whose previous novels include the excellent \u201cPym<\/a>\u201d (2011), is himself the product of such a marriage \u2014 his mother is black, his father not just white but Irish white \u2014 and the politics of his own racial mix is a topic he\u2019s written about with discernment and a rumbling wit.<\/p>\n

In The New York Times Magazine recently, he described learning from a DNA test that he is 26 percent African<\/a>. \u201cI wasn\u2019t a mustefino,\u201d he said, as if paging through a field guide. \u201c(Who has even heard of a mustefino?) I surpassed octoroon status, too; I was a quadroon with a percentage point to spare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLoving Day\u201d is about being blackish in America, a subject about which Mr. Johnson has emerged as satirist, historian, spy, social media trickster (follow him on Twitter<\/a>) and demon-fingered blues guitarist.<\/p>\n

The novel is about a man in early middle age named Warren Duffy, who loosely resembles Mr. Johnson. That is, he\u2019s a culturally sophisticated black man who can just about pass for white<\/a>. He considers himself \u201cblack, with an asterisk,\u201d adding, \u201cThe asterisk is my whole body.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

Review: Mat Johnson\u2019s \u2018Loving Day\u2019 Takes a Satirical Slant on Racial Identities The New York Times 2015-05-26 Dwight Garner, Senior writer and book critic Mat Johnson\u2019s new novel, \u201cLoving Day,\u201d takes its title from an unofficial holiday, one his narrator likens to \u201cMulatto Christmas.\u201d It\u2019s the observance of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,20],"tags":[7200,2355,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-41325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-dwight-garner","tag-mat-johnson","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41325","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=41325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}