Growing up black in Minneapolis, fighting in South Africa

Friday, October 10, **7:30pm* - Magers And Quinn Booksellers

Frank Wilderson III discusses his new book /Incognegro/

Frank Wilderson grew up in Minneapolis, took courses at the U, and was well known in the literary community here before doing his MFA at Columbia, and then moving to South Africa, where he joined the struggle against aparthed and was recruited by M-K. Both the parts about growing up black in Minneapolis during the black nationalist period, and the parts about loving and fighting in South Africa should be of great interest to Minnesota students and faculty. There is plenty of gripping narrative, but also trenchant and daring post-Fanonian analysis by a serious literary-political intellectual. See the praise from Ngugi and Ishmael Reed below.

(Frank will also appear at the Rain Taxi book fair at MCTC on Saturday, October 11, but is on a large panel and may not get much time.)
Charlie Sugnet
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"Wilderson [will] become a major American writer. Mark my word."--Ishmael Reed

"Into the wake of great literature fighting human bondage, Frank Wilderson pours Incognegro. And, like the offerings of Ellison, Fanon, Baldwin and Morrison, this revolutionary love story must be widely read, generously shared, and relentlessly engaged."--Joy James, author of Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics

"Fast paced, critical, humorous, hilarious at times, Incognegro asks provocative questions about post-Apartheid South Africa and post-civil rights America with all the passion, the drama and the political clarity of a great autobiography. With perspectives from different times and places in the two continents, and with an unerring eye and ear for a telling detail and image, Frank Wilderson brings a novelistic and dramatic imagination to a story of our times. It is a multi-layered narrative of a life molded in struggles for human dignity in America and Africa, at once a gripping story of race politics and a biography of his soul."--Ngugi wa Thiong'o, author of The Wizard of the Crow

In 1995, a South African journalist informed Frank Wilderson, one of only two Black American members of the African National Congress (ANC), that President Nelson Mandela considered him "a threat to national security." Wilderson was asked to comment. Incognegro is that "comment." It is also his response to a question posed five years later by a student in a California university classroom: "How come you came back?"

Although Wilderson recollects his turbulent life in South Africa during the furious last gasps of apartheid, Incognegro is a quintessentially American story. Wilderson taught at Johannesburg and Soweto universities by day. By night, he helped the ANC coordinate clandestine propaganda, launch psychological warfare, and more. In this mesmerizing memoir, Wilderson's lyrical prose flows from childhood episodes in the white Minneapolis enclave "integrated" by his family to a rebellious adolescence at the student barricades in Berkeley and under tutelage of the Black Panther Party; from unspeakable dilemmas in the red dust and ruin of South Africa to political battles raging quietly on US campuses and in his intimate life. Readers will find themselves suddenly overtaken by the subtle but resolute force of Wilderson's biting wit, rare vulnerability, and insistence on bearing witness to history no matter the cost.

A literary tour de force sure to spark fierce debate in both America and South Africa, Incognegro retells a story most Americans assume we already know, with a sometimes awful, but ultimately essential clarity about global politics and our own lives. Frank B. Wilderson, III is the award-winning author of Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms (Duke University Press, 2007) and the director of Reparations…Now (in-progress).

Frank B. Wilderson, III helped the ANC coordinate clandestine propaganda and launch psychological warfare while teaching in apartheid-era South Africa. He is the recipient of The Eisner Prize for Creative Achievement of the Highest Order; The Judith Stronach Award for Poetry; and The Maya Angelou Award for Best Fiction Portraying the Black Experience in America. He teaches African American studies and drama at the University of California, Irvine.