If something this graphically over the top, in your face, and on the mark doesn’t mortify white supremacy into oblivion, then nothing will ... The junkie visions of Naked Lunch are often cited as direct links to Negrophobia’s hallucinatory delirium, and William S. Burroughs’s demented-vaudeville tone of voice resonates in James’s descriptions of Bubbles’s world ... In this social-media era, when we are more intent than ever on isolating things that offend and outrage, Negrophobia revels in its own outrageousness, and thus is more of a tonic now than it was almost three decades ago. It neither blinks nor recoils at the stereotypes, insults, and presumptions that have been used to cage and subdue African American self-esteem, but compels its readers to confront rather than retreat from or smooth over the retro Jim Crow imagery. Negrophobia inhales all that inappropriateness with gusto and composure before shooting it all right back in the face of whatever we mean by 'political correctness.'
James’ head-spinning, hallucinogenic satire transcends sarcasm to become a potent, outrageous, over-the-edge odyssey ... Revulsive acts, zombies, and gross, nightmarish transformations are only the very tip of the iceberg in this urban parable that should raise a few eyebrows and is not for the easily offended or weak at heart.
Every racial stereotype about black people comes to boisterous, blistering life in this outrageous first novel--a grand guignol comic book that draws from both racist kitsch and Afro- American high culture ... Totally in-your-face, sexually explicit, postmodern ... here are patches of hilarious doggerel, and bursts of iconographic high jinks. James's raucous debut is by far the best novel to emerge from New York's Lower East Side literary scene.
There is imagination and wicked humor in all of this, as well as some piercing insight. But the flow of images is so wild and relentless that it becomes numbing, and its impact is lost. The eschewal of traditional narrative makes the book so filmic that tired readers may deem it unsuited for the page, wishing instead for what would be a spectacular--if technically onerous--movie.
