Noir meets diverse voices and transforms the genre into an over-the-top, transcendental psychedelic thriller ride in this collection of fifteen pulpy stories of conspiracy noir, riffing on the numerous fictions spun about the 44th president of the U.S.
...a collection of 15 stories so sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination ... The overarching aim of all this outlandishness is to entertain, as well as to tuck some social criticism into the formulaic folds of these tales of spooks, spies, private eyes, clones, bots and alien invaders ... In recent years, writers of color have taken up sci-fi and fantasy in particular as richly poetic vehicles to explore racism and imagine alternative worlds. The pulp stories in The Obama Inheritance — sci-fi, fantasy and noir — are fun to read, and be forewarned: Many of them also pack a punch.
Amid this bull market for Obama-related conspiracy theories, it is entirely understandable that a group of writers felt inspired to
produce, The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir...Truth may be stranger than fiction, but why should the conspiracists have all the fun of creating fake narratives? ... Yet, running beneath the book’s mockery of conspiracy fanatics, the unspoken question that I raised earlier persists: Why are there so many outlandish conspiracy theories about the Obamas? The answer, I believe, can best be detected as this book’s authors do, through the lens of identity — and I’m not talking only about race.
While these tales may be wanting as literature, they do succeed as a kind of 'laugh, clown, laugh' approach to trauma therapy ... A few of the stories, including some of the best, simply treat the reader to a hearty laugh at the credulity of ignoramuses who fell for the 'fake news' peddled by organs of the alt-right and Russian bots ... It’s not as good as it could be, but it’s still a fun read.
