Contributions by GerShun Avilez, Lola Boorman, Thomas Britt, John Brooks, Phillip James Martinez Cortes, Derek DiMatteo, Tikenya Foster-Singletary, Alexandra Glavanakova, Erica-Brittany Horhn, Matthias Klestil, Abigail Jinju Lee, Derek C. Maus, Danielle Fuentes Morgan, Derek Conrad Murray, Kinohi Nishikawa, Sarah O'Brien, Keyana Parks, and Emily Ruth Rutter The seventeen essays in Greater Atlanta: Black Satire after Obama collectively argue that in the years after the widespread hopefulness surrounding Barack Obama's election as president waned, Black satire began to reveal a profound shift in US culture. Using the four seasons of the FX television show Atlanta (2016-22) as a springboard, the collection examines more than a dozen novels, films, and television shows that together reveal the ways in which Black satire has developed in response to contemporary cultural dynamics. Contributors reveal increased scorn toward self-proclaimed allies in the existential struggle still facing African Americans today. Having started its production within a few weeks of Donald Trump's (in)famous escalator ride in 2015, Atlanta in many ways is the perfect commentary on the absurdities of the contemporary cultural moment. The series exemplifies a significant development in contemporary Black satire, which largely eschews expectations of reform and instead offers an exasperated self-affirmation that echoes the declaration that Black Lives Matter. Given anti-Black racism's lengthy history, overt stimuli for outrage have predictably commanded African American satirists' attention through the years. However, more recent works emphasize the willful ignorance underlying that history. As the volume shows, this has led to the exposure of performative allyship, virtue signaling, slacktivism, and other duplicitous forms of purported support as empty, oblivious gestures that ultimately harm African Americans as grievously as unconcealed bigotry.
Derek C. Maus is professor of English at SUNY Potsdam and author of Unvarnishing Reality: Subversive Russian and American Cold War Satire. He is also editor of Conversations with Colson Whitehead and coeditor (with Owen E. Brady) of Finding a Way Home: A Critical Assessment of Walter Mosley's Fiction, both published by University Press of Mississippi. James J. Donahue is professor and assistant chair of the Department of English & Communication at SUNY Potsdam. He is author of Contemporary Native Fiction: Toward a Narrative Poetics of Survivance and Failed Frontiersmen: White Men and Myth in the Post-Sixties American Historical Romance and coeditor (with Jennifer Ann Ho and Shaun Morgan) of Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States. Maus and Donahue coedited Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, published by University Press of Mississippi.
"I've Done Told You, These Backhoes Ain't Loyal!": Atlanta and the State of Black Satire after Obama Derek C. Maus Downtown Atlanta On the Perils of Enjoying One's Wound: Atlanta and Contemporary African American Satire Derek Conrad Murray Whispering Sexuality: Queer Erasure and Black Satirical Disruption GerShun Avilez Satirizing Satire Itself: Atlanta's Appropriation Aesthetic and the Blackening of US Civil Society John Brooks Awkwardness and Black Millennial Satire in Insecure and Atlanta Erica-Brittney Horhn and Derek C. Maus Forsyth County White (Al)lies: Eating the Other in Atlanta and Jordan Peele's Get Out Emily Ruth Rutter Racial Self-Identification in Atlanta and Danzy Senna's New People Alexandra Glavanakova "Know Thyself": Education and Identity Fashioning in Atlanta and Dear White People Derek DiMatteo Lake Lanier Canines and Tricksters in Atlanta Matthias Klestil "That's You": Reflections on Human-Animal Doublings in Atlanta's Televisual Satire Sarah O'Brien DeKalb County "You Chose Black": Atlanta's Gendered Politics of Black Respectability and Representation Keyana Parks Atlanta and the Instability of Racial Performance Tikenya Foster-Singletary "What the Hell Is Muckin'?": Mistranslation and Linguistic Pessimism in Atlanta Lola Boorman Ironic Minstrelsies of Affect in Atlanta Phillip James Martinez Cortes "It's a Simulation, Van": Atlanta, The Twilight Zone, and the Uncanniness of Black Womanhood Danielle Fuentes Morgan East Point/College Park Becoming Inhuman: Donald Glover, Hiro Murai, and the Self-Alienation of Celebrity Kinohi Nishikawa Streets on Locke: The Volition of Atlanta Thomas Britt Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Playing on the Border: Racial Ambiguity, Passing, and Possibility in Atlanta and Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown Abigail Jinju Lee Composite Works Cited About the Contributors Index
The erudite analysis unpacks the complex ideas embedded in the series's surreal vision of Atlanta. This will enhance fans' appreciation of the show. (Publishers Weekly) Greater Atlanta is the collection we need right now. It is far more than the first extended critical study of Atlanta, one of the best television shows of our era. This volume gathers the sharpest minds interested in African American culture and satire to examine the many complexities in Black lives since the Obama presidency. A sequel to Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, in many ways Greater Atlanta is even more essential. No scholar of contemporary African American culture should be without it. - Darryl Dickson-Carr, professor of English at Southern Methodist University
