Colored Television by Danzy Senna

´Novel writing was too much´.

Jane, the main protagonist of latest novvel by Danzy Senna, Colored Television, is writer, the daughter of a white mother and a black father, divorced now, and has two children, with a black abstract painter. Moving from the East to the West coast, she is enjoying house sitting expensive mansions, this time in a posh neighbourhood in LA. She has dreams on her own, purchasing a house in a diverse fancy neighbourhood with the money from a book contract. A book that her beloved husband called ´mulatto War and Peace´, but it seems he is the only one who really appreciated the result of her almost a decade of writing.

Senna who is sharing a similar background - except that her husband, Percival Everett is a writer and she is quite successful herself - but all those details instead of complicating the general framework, it only allows the narrative to suit the framework in a smooth way. Colored Television is a novel about ambitions, class dreams of bourgeois-intellectuals and over intensive identity politics. The intensity and frequence of a wish make it desirable, an objective in itself. One writes a book or a plot for the status - social and financial - it brings. Thus, it doesn´t matter if you are a novelist or a screenwriter. Fame guarantees a stable future, a tenure, money to send your children to private schools, that house with a pool.

Although I feel tired by books about identity politics - and nothing more - Colored Television is so ironically smart that is worth reading it even only for the intelligent fun. Despite being moderatelly critic; after all, who will refuse the chance of a fancy mansion? Intellectuals need to enjoy life too, isn´t it?

Rating: 3 stars