“Black and White and Read All Over”
“Black and White and Read All Over”
Representing Race in Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery
A crucial paradox of racial categories can be identified in Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, a comic book written by Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece which shows that the color line is both unreal and deadly real, a metaphorical construct with lethal ramifications. By eliminating all color from their book, Johnson and Pleece seem to have intervened in the history of racist representations of African Americans in comics, in addition to destabilizing the white South’s attempts to “read” categories of black and white in the physiognomy of its citizens. This chapter examines narratives of passing and lynching in Incognegro to demonstrate how the comic critiques socially constructed ideas of race during Jim Crow.
Keywords: comics, Incognegro, Mat Johnson, Warren Pleece, color line, African Americans, South, passing, lynching, race
University Press of Mississippi requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
