Colored Television presents a brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex. Jane harbors high hopes that her life is on the brink of transformation. After a prolonged period of precarious existence, Jane, her artist husband Lenny, and their two children embark on a journey as house sitters in a friend's opulent abode nestled in the Los Angeles hills—a fortuitous arrangement that aligns perfectly with Jane's sabbatical.
If she can complete her latest work of literature, Nusu Nusu—a sweeping epic that Lenny playfully dubs her 'mulatto War and Peace'—she'll secure tenure, along with a semblance of stability and achievement. However, reality fails to meet expectations. Desperate for an alternative, Jane, like many authors before her, casts a hopeful eye towards Hollywood. A chance encounter with an up-and-coming producer, eager to craft 'diverse content' for a streaming platform, brings a glimmer of hope. He is keen to collaborate with a 'real writer' to produce what he imagines will be the ultimate biracial comedy for television.
Just as things begin to look up for Jane, they take a drastic turn for the worse. Colored Television is not only humorous and incisive but also a compelling read, marking Senna's most timely and insightful novel to date.
Long before U.S. News and World Report named him one of America's Best Leaders and Oprah Winfrey called him an angel from God, Geoffrey Canada was a small, vulnerable, scared boy growing up in the South Bronx. Canada's world was one where "sidewalk" boys learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher.
In this candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner. If you wonder how a fourteen-year-old can shoot another child his own age in the head and then go home to dinner, Canada writes, you need to know you don't get there in a day, or week, or month. It takes years of preparation to be willing to commit murder, to be willing to kill or die for a corner, a color, or a leather jacket.