Black Card

June 10, 2019
Terry’s darkly humorous coming-of-age novel (after Zero Fade) explores the nuances and challenges of being a young black man in America. A punk rock bassist with a white mother and black father living in Richmond, Va., the unnamed narrator struggles with feeling “black enough.” “Being mistaken for white erases half of me,” he muses, “and happens so often that I think I’ve failed at blackness.” In a desperate attempt to finally earn his Black Card—an actual card—he indulges in misconceived stereotypes of blackness. He tries to “speak more black” and changes up his style of dress. He earns his card but has it revoked by his guide/mentor Lucius when he fails to speak up during a racist incident. Determined to earn back his card, he performs rap songs at a white karaoke bar and musters up the courage to ask out his black coworker, Mona. When Mona is assaulted in her apartment, he becomes a suspect and is finally forced to face his racial identity. “The minute Mona told the cops about me, she’d given me something. She’d made it so I’d never, ever doubt that I was black.” This memorable, deeply insightful work has echoes of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Terry’s provocative and timely novel challenges readers to confront the racial stereotypes and injustices in America.

July 1, 2019
A satire of American race relations and the performance of identity. Terry (Zero Fade, 2013) tells the story of a nameless punk musician struggling with his own racial identity. After growing up in the mostly white suburbs of Washington, D.C., with his white mom and black father, the narrator moves with his family to a black community in Richmond, Virginia. The narrator's love of skateboarding, rock music, and his white mother make him feel like an outsider among black people. "I felt excluded from blackness," he recalls, "and like it was my fault that I couldn't fix it." His insecurities manifest in Lucius, a psychic projection of his self-consciousness that takes the form of a street-wise black man who takes it upon himself to teach our narrator how to be black. He gives the narrator his Black Card, which "entitles the brotha or sista who bears it to all black privileges, including but not limited to: Use of the n-word...and, most important, a healthy skepticism of white folks." It's proof that the narrator is really black--but it requires that the holder's authenticity be evaluated periodically. When a white friend's dad uses the n-word and the narrator says nothing in response, Lucius confiscates his Black Card for dereliction of duty. Our punk performs a series of stunts--like performing Run DMC to a roomful of white country music fans who are a bit too enthusiastic--to reclaim his blackness. Meanwhile, he develops a crush on his black co-worker Mona, with whom he can have less rigid conversations about blackness than those he has with Lucius. "There isn't one way to be black," she advises our narrator. But when he becomes implicated in a sexual assault, the narrator's freedom is threatened, and he confronts what it really means to be black in America. This is a funny novel with sharp insights into the constructed nature of racial identity. However, the plot is thin, the characters largely uninteresting, and the prose workmanlike. All that's left are the novel's ideas, which Terry repeats so often that they come to seem rather ham-fisted. This is a funny novel whose insights are unfortunately too one-note to be illuminating.

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July 1, 2019
In Terry's (Zero Fade, 2013) second novel, an unnamed biracial musician navigates age-old stereotypes in a struggle for self-acceptance. His friend and mentor in Richmond, Virginia, Lucius?who can be seen as representing the double-consciousness of lived Blackness versus perceived blackness, and the process of creating one's Black identity?takes away his "Black Card" for failing to advocate for himself. Whether Terry's protagonist is "funky" or "punk-rock" means little in the face of racism, and he's forced to get real with himself when police suspect he was involved in an attack because he "fits the description." He eventually tunes out those who would rather sort him into "black stuff" and "white stuff" in favor of his own melody. One might consider this an adult version of Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give (2017) and other Black coming-of-age stories. While Terry doesn't make Lucius' role clear right away, his characterization, humor, and sensuality allow the reader to smell his sweat and feel his nervousness when he asks out his crush. Overall, this is a welcome tale that undercuts stereotypical portrayals of Blackness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)