Colored Television by Danzy Senna

 

Jane and Lenny seem to have it all.  A great marriage, two children and a house in the Hollywood Hills that has been in designer magazines.  Jane is a professor and novelist, Lenny an artist.  But the picture isn't true.  Jane has had one book published, and that was nine years ago.  Lenny is productive but his paintings don't sell.  They don't own the house.  They move from dingy apartment to housesitting assignments almost every year and this house belongs to a friend of Jane's from college who hit it big in television.  Their son may be on the spectrum but the doctors can't agree.

Jane has been working on a novel for nine years.  It is a theme close to her heart, the history of mulatto people and their place in American history.  It is an epic and has sprawled into hundreds of pages.  When she finally finishes it, she sends it off with pride only to get negative feedback.  Her friend is coming home soon and where will they go?

Jane takes a meeting with a producer who is on the rise.  He wants to make a television comedy featuring a mulatto family and thinks Jane is exactly the right person.  She is mulatto herself and has all the research she has done for her novel.  Will this be her big break?

Danzy Senna is an American author who has written six novels, most featuring some aspect of the racial divide.  She is mulatto herself and knows the territory she writes about.  This book is her most successful.  It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2024, a Good Morning America book club pick and a Washington Post Top 10 Book Of The Year.  Jane is a character who the reader will come to admire.  She is willing to do anything to keep her family healthy and happy.  Her struggles to survive and thrive with makeshift jobs and living arrangements make me tired just reading about them.  The reader will cheer for Jane and wish her the best.  This book is recommended for literary fiction and multicultural fiction readers.