Juice! by Ishmael Reed. Library Call Number: PS3568.E365J85 2011.
Reed has written a biting, satiric look at what passes for race relations in the American “post-racial” society. O.J. Simpson’s trial in 1994 acts as a catalyst to the story here of five aging friends, all in a different art, all worried about the numerous illnesses and injuries of aging, watching America progress through the 90’s into the 21st century. Told through the eyes of African-American Paul Blessings, a diabetic television cartoonist for an alternative station, “Juice!” is an obsessive account of Simpson’s trial, the rise of the corporation and the burial of culture. Blessings, who pens a cartoon called Attitude the Badger, says, “Jonathan Kraal, who had taken over this…network kept me on. He wanted his station to appeal to high school teachers, dot commers and MBAs. I have nothing in common with these people.”
Dalkey Archive says, “Juice! serves as a comi-tragedy, chronicling the increased anxieties of ‘post-race’ America.”
