Macon Detornay hates the white man. A tattoo of “4-29-92” (the date of the LA Riots) brands his arm, and now he’s pulling guns on the “white devils” who bark orders at him from the backseat of his New York City cab, and taking their wallets. Macon is a white teenager from Newton, Massachusetts, two weeks into his freshman year at Columbia University.

From Adam Mansbach, the critically acclaimed author of Shackling Water comes Angry Black White Boy, or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay ($12.95 paperback original, Three Rivers Press, March 8, 2005) an incendiary, ruthlessly funny breakout book about a young man’s mission to make white America confront its past.

Macon’s crime spree sets off a manhunt for the black man presumed to be committing the robberies. When his true identity is revealed, Macon finds himself a celebrity. Coached by his roommate, Andre Walker, and his new friend, budding hustler, Dominique Lavar, he seizes the media spotlight to hold forth on the evils and invisibility of whiteness, force Caucasians to confront themselves, and explain why X-Clan was the greatest rap group of all time.

Soon, Macon founds The Race Traitor Project, a stress-addled collective that attracts guilty liberals, wannabe gangstas and bandwagon-riders from all over the country to participate in a Day of Apology — a day set aside for white people to make amends to blacks for four hundred years of oppression. The Dayf Apology pushes New York City over the edge into an epic riot, and forces Macon to confront the depth of his own commitment to the struggle. He finds it lacking and flees in shame to the deep South, trying to escape himself.

That’s when he meets millionaire racial-deprogrammer, Conway Donner, and his problems really start.

Interspersed with the spiraling madness of Macon’s rise and fall is the story of an 1889 baseball game — the last integrated Major League contest until 1947 — which pitted Macon’s great-grandfather, Cap Anson, the Hall of Fame first-basemen responsible for establishing the color line, against Andre’s great-grandfather, Moses “Fleet” Walker, the only black player who chose to finish out the season.

Peopled with all manner of race pimps and players, from callow Columbia hip hop professor, Umamu Shaheed Alam, to grassroots organizer, Alan Umfufu McDowell, to Macon’s backpack-rap fans and redneck enemies (not to mention his redneck fans and backpack-rap enemies), Angry Black White Boy is a startling, subversive, raucous satire — destined to spark a national dialogue, and required reading for anyone who wants to get under the skin of identity in America.

In Stores: March 8th, 2005
Buy the book here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Adam Mansbach is the author of the novel, Shackling Water (Doubleday, 2000), and the poetry collection, genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights (Subway & Elevated, 2002). He is the former editor of the hip hop journal Elementary, a teacher for Youth Speaks, and Artistic Consultant to Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies. His writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, JazzTimes, Wax Poetics, Urban Think Tank, Trace 360hiphop, Brooklyn Noir (Akashic, 2004) and The Best Music Writing 2004 (Da Capo, 2004). He has performed or lectured at the Harlem Book Fair, The Boston Globe Book Fair, PEN America Styleworks, Columbia University’s Whitney M. Young Center for Human Rights, Brave New Voices, the Living Word Festival, UC Berkeley and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. For more
information, please visit: www.AdamMansbach.com.

CHECK OUT ADAM’S OP-ED IN TODAY’S BOSTON GLOBE
“The Case for White History Month”
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/03/08/the_case_for_white_history_month/

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