{"id":50393,"date":"2016-12-02T23:44:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T23:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=50393"},"modified":"2016-12-02T23:58:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T23:58:33","slug":"review-krazy-by-michael-tisserand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=50393","title":{"rendered":"Review: \u201cKrazy\u201d by Michael Tisserand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review: \u201cKrazy\u201d by Michael Tisserand<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Know Louisiana: The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana and Home of Louisiana Cultural Vistas<\/a>
\n2016-12-02 (Winter 2016)<\/p>\n

Lydia Nichols<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There is nothing more American than passing<\/a>, the act of projecting a racial identity other than that assigned. At no other time and place in American history have necessity and opportunity so dramatically conspired to create the possibility for passing as in late 19th century New Orleans<\/a>. Reconstruction<\/a> had failed to establish equitable institutions for those whom the Constitution had denied 2\/5 of their personhood; and by 1877, the Southern Democrats (former Confederates<\/a>) had reclaimed political and social dominion over the state. As W.E.B Du Bois<\/a> writes in Black Reconstruction<\/em><\/a>, Louisiana\u2019s<\/a> government was to be \u201ca government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive political benefit of the white race.\u201d Though identifying as neither white nor black, New Orleans\u2019 Afro-Creoles, who had enjoyed relative mobility prior to the Civil War<\/a>, were kicked out of schools and churches, cut off from quality education, and pushed to \u201ccolored cars.\u201d It became clear that hybridity was no longer acknowledged or welcome. Well-educated, multilingual and able to pass for white<\/a>, unknown numbers of Creoles left to seek whatever security their ambiguity would allow. Among them was George Joseph Herriman<\/a>, a ten-year old boy who in time would become a white man and a pioneering cartoonist.<\/p>\n

Michael Tisserand<\/a> provides a painstakingly well-researched analysis of Herriman\u2019s life and work in Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White<\/em><\/a> (HarperCollins, 2016). Herriman, a man of diverse interests and experiences, created comics laden with allusions to classical literature and philosophy; written in immigrant, black and southern vernaculars; and often incorporating foreign languages. The most famous and longest-running of his comics was Krazy Kat<\/em><\/a>, a gender non-conforming, color-changing cat in the southwestern desert who regularly drops philosophical gems in his own dialect of English…<\/p>\n

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

Review: \u201cKrazy\u201d by Michael Tisserand Know Louisiana: The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana and Home of Louisiana Cultural Vistas 2016-12-02 (Winter 2016) Lydia Nichols There is nothing more American than passing, the act of projecting a racial identity other than that assigned. At no other time and place in American history have necessity and opportunity so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,5,1196,369,8,6462,20],"tags":[9929,25612,25610,9930,25611,25524,1438],"class_list":["post-50393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-george-herriman","tag-george-joseph-herriman","tag-know-louisiana","tag-krazy-kat","tag-lydia-nichols","tag-michael-tisserand","tag-new-orleans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50393","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=50393"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50395,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50393\/revisions\/50395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}