This is a really interesting novel about ambition and marriage. Also writing, and especially writing for tv, though the Hollywood industry part was more stressful than appealing for me. But this core problem of being in a marriage that has its problems but also its joys and comforts, where you and your partner seem to have different ideas about what kind of life you’d ultimately like to live, was fascinating.
I used to frequently teach Hélène Cixous’ “Laugh of the Medusa” in an Intro Lit Theory class, and I think that for a long time I thought of it as slightly cringy — important, yes, but also just, like, a lot. I guess I wrote about this a few years ago, and I think it’s been slowly building in me since — I increasingly find that essay powerfully relatable. And this bit in particular:
Time and again I, too, have felt so full of luminous torrents that I could burst—burst with forms much more beautiful than those which are put up in frames and sold for a stinking fortune. And I, too, said nothing, showed nothing; I didn’t open my mouth, I didn’t repaint my half of the world. I was ashamed, and I swallowed my shame and my fear. I said to myself: You are mad!
And this is what I think Colored Television depicts really well. How making art, writing a novel or a tv script, often feels embarrassing, and wanting to be recognized and admired for doing so, especially. Even when your husband supports your work, maybe there’s still an aspect of it that you can’t quite confess to, a kind of admiration you want that feels gross. And meanwhile men seem so un-selfconscious about their desires, so entitled to dream whatever they want, make whatever art they want. How do they do it? It’s even more glaring when you’re no longer a bright young thing in your 20s, but a middle-aged woman with a post-partum body trying to navigate just how “sexy” you’re supposed to look.
There’s also a little bit about motherhood here — in the guilt of pursuing a project that takes you away from your children, both physically and mentally, but also in the more typical contemporary worries about whether your child is “normal;” whether diagnosing them provides access to resources they need or only serves to stigmatize them and force them to assimilate to some invented norm. But this part seemed a little like an afterthought — heartfelt when it was there, but often absent. I guess that’s exactly the point of the first aspect, heh heh — how parenting isn’t actually the center of your focus all the time.
And yes, it’s also about being mixed race. But despite the title, I don’t think that’s the CENTRAL point of the book. Danzy Senna has talked about how she is frequently asked why she writes so much about biracial characters, and how strange a question that is really (Sally Rooney, why do you keep writing about Irish Millenials?). Yes, there’s plenty of material here about being Black, or being mixed, but it’s organic to the story, rather than the entire point of the story. I keep seeing the book described as a satire, and I don’t think that’s quite right — it does satirize aspects of how race is commodified for tv audiences, but I think it’s mostly just…realism. Certainly, the joking banter between characters about race is, and it’s captured so well. Maybe I don’t understand what people mean by satire.
Anyways, I really liked this book.
Kasia Reads 