Maroon Weekly

Book Review

Incognegro- by Mat Johnson

Robert McElligott

Incognegro is a graphic novel and noir murder-mystery that travels well beyond any formula or template. The plot is deftly embedded in American history while the subject matter stays true to the African-American literary tradition of genuine truth and refuting dogma. The main character, Zane Pinchback, is an urbane Harlem journalist who has the ability to “pass” as white and does so in order to travel to the South and expose hate crimes. This ability is not fantasy or some super power you find in so many other graphic novels and comics– it’s historically accurate.

Pinchback’s ability is not caused by some genetic anomaly either; he is a product of malfeasant rape. Mat Johnson brilliantly defines Zane’s circumstance toward the novel’s beginning: “American Negroes are a mulatto people; I’m just an extreme example. A walking reminder.” He uses his mixed heritage to undermine the cause of it; he saunters around Mississippi pretending to be a KKK member to save victims. To combat hate crimes, lynchings, and commonplace racism, he writes exposés in Harlem under the pseudonym Incognegro– using information as a weapon.

Mat Johnson is a professor of creative writing at the University of Houston, and his scholarship shows. This story is richly rendered and incredibly related to American history and his personal biography. Johnson himself is half black and half white. The author’s note explains that during his childhood, his mixed heritage was a burden in the height of the Black Power era. He fantasized about a time and place where an ability to be black or white would be useful. Later in college he discovered the former head of the NAACP, Walter White, was a pale skinned African-American that traveled to the South investigating lynchings; here Johnson’s story began to find its roots.