The Content of Our Caricature
African American Comic Art and Political Belonging
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Winner, 2021 Katherine Singer KovĂĄcs Book Award, given by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Winner, 2021 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards for Best Academic/Scholarly Work
Honorable Mention, 2021 Harry Shaw and Katrina Hazzard-Donald Award for Outstanding Work in African-American Popular Culture Studies, given by the Popular Culture Association
Winner, 2020 Charles Hatfield Book Prize, given by the Comic Studies Society
Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head
Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States.
Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard "Grass" Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Cruté, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Introduction: A Visual Grammar of Citizenship
- 1 âImpussanations,â Coons, and Civic Ideals: A Black Comics Aesthetic
- 2 The Revolutionary Body: Nat Turner, King, and Frozen Subjection
- 3 Wearing Hero-Face: Melancholic Patriotism in Truth: Red, White & Black
- 4 âThe Only Thing Unamerican about Me Is the Treatment I Get!â Infantile Citizenship and the Situational Grotesque
- 5 Rape and Race in the Gutter: Equal Opportunity Humor Aesthetics and Underground Comix
- To Caricature, with Love: A Black Panther Coda
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
- About the Author