By Tyler Austin Harper

Early on in Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, her biracial writer-professor protagonist, Jane, takes a meeting with Hampton Ford, a Black producer who is pivoting from network to prestige TV. Jane’s situation is less enviable. Up against a tenure deadline, she has a neurodivergent son, a daughter shunted from school to school, and a tuned-out abstract-painter husband at home—as well as a recently completed, 450-page second novel that has been unceremoniously rejected by her agent and her publisher. What’s more, home for the four of them is the latest in a succession of house-sitting gigs in unaffordable L.A. The family’s hopes for upward mobility have been pinned on Jane’s promotion to associate professor. No wonder, then, that she has resolved to seek her fortunes in the shadow of the nearby Hollywood sign.eptember 2024 Issue

A Satire of America’s Obsession With Identity
The hero of Danzy Senna’s new novel is trying, and failing, to write the Great American Biracial Novel.

By Tyler Austin Harper
Hands holding a book depicting an abstract half-Black and half-white person holding another smaller book with a half-white/half-Black face
Illustration by Rachel Levit Ruiz

Early on in Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, her biracial writer-professor protagonist, Jane, takes a meeting with Hampton Ford, a Black producer who is pivoting from network to prestige TV. Jane’s situation is less enviable. Up against a tenure deadline, she has a neurodivergent son, a daughter shunted from school to school, and a tuned-out abstract-painter husband at home—as well as a recently completed, 450-page second novel that has been unceremoniously rejected by her agent and her publisher. What’s more, home for the four of them is the latest in a succession of house-sitting gigs in unaffordable L.A. The family’s hopes for upward mobility have been pinned on Jane’s promotion to associate professor. No wonder, then, that she has resolved to seek her fortunes in the shadow of the nearby Hollywood sign.

A Satire of America’s Obsession With Identity
The hero of Danzy Senna’s new novel is trying, and failing, to write the Great American Biracial Novel.

By Tyler Austin Harper
Hands holding a book depicting an abstract half-Black and half-white person holding another smaller book with a half-white/half-Black face
Illustration by Rachel Levit Ruiz

Early on in Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, her biracial writer-professor protagonist, Jane, takes a meeting with Hampton Ford, a Black producer who is pivoting from network to prestige TV. Jane’s situation is less enviable. Up against a tenure deadline, she has a neurodivergent son, a daughter shunted from school to school, and a tuned-out abstract-painter husband at home—as well as a recently completed, 450-page second novel that has been unceremoniously rejected by her agent and her publisher. What’s more, home for the four of them is the latest in a succession of house-sitting gigs in unaffordable L.A. The family’s hopes for upward mobility have been pinned on Jane’s promotion to associate professor. No wonder, then, that she has resolved to seek her fortunes in the shadow of the nearby Hollywood sign.A Satire of America’s Obsession With Identity
The hero of Danzy Senna’s new novel is trying, and failing, to write the Great American Biracial Novel.Hands holding a book depicting an abstract half-Black and half-white person holding another smaller book with a half-white/half-Black face

Early on in Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, her biracial writer-professor protagonist, Jane, takes a meeting with Hampton Ford, a Black producer who is pivoting from network to prestige TV. Jane’s situation is less enviable. Up against a tenure deadline, she has a neurodivergent son, a daughter shunted from school to school, and a tuned-out abstract-painter husband at home—as well as a recently completed, 450-page second novel that has been unceremoniously rejected by her agent and her publisher. What’s more, home for the four of them is the latest in a succession of house-sitting gigs in unaffordable L.A. The family’s hopes for upward mobility have been pinned on Jane’s promotion to associate professor. No wonder, then, that she has resolved to seek her fortunes in the shadow of the nearby Hollywood sign.

A Satire of America’s Obsession With Identity
The hero of Danzy Senna’s new novel is trying, and failing, to write the Great American Biracial Novel.

By Tyler Austin Harper
Hands holding a book depicting an abstract half-Black and half-white person holding another smaller book with a half-white/half-Black face
Illustration by Rachel Levit Ruiz

Early on in Danzy Senna’s new novel, Colored Television, her biracial writer-professor protagonist, Jane, takes a meeting with Hampton Ford, a Black producer who is pivoting from network to prestige TV. Jane’s situation is less enviable. Up against a tenure deadline, she has a neurodivergent son, a daughter shunted from school to school, and a tuned-out abstract-painter husband at home—as well as a recently completed, 450-page second novel that has been unceremoniously rejected by her agent and her publisher. What’s more, home for the four of them is the latest in a succession of house-sitting gigs in unaffordable L.A. The family’s hopes for upward mobility have been pinned on Jane’s promotion to associate professor. No wonder, then, that she has resolved to seek her fortunes in the shadow of the nearby Hollywood sign.