Blackass By A. Igoni Barrett

Barrett, Igoni A., Blackass, Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2016.

Barret’s Blackass is a funny, fierce and provocative satire. It is all started when Furo Wariboko, a true blue Lagos man, wakes up in the morning for his job interview to discover he has turned into a white man (except that his ass remains stubbornly black). He then adopts a name Frank Whyte and starts his adventure in the city streets in his new transformation in modern Nigeria.  He suddenly finds the dead ends of his life open up before him. This thought provoking inventive book touches everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. "No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any colour in between, and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world." - Michael Schaub, NPR.

To know more about the author and his other works, visit Goodreads. 

Read interview with Barrett by Granta.