Hassler-Forest applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Janelle Monáe’s Queer Afrofuturism: Defying Every Label, and reported the following:
Page 99 is kind of a weird page to open to for any reader who (justifiably!) comes to this expecting a book that’s all about Janelle Monáe. It’s in the middle of a section about her role in the animated film UglyDolls, for which she was one of the voice actors. But as in each section, it then goes on to discuss broader media phenomena of race and gender in media, arriving at the start of this page on the term ‘plastic representation.’ The first paragraphs use examples like Star Wars: The Force Awakens to illustrate how on-screen racial diversity doesn’t necessarily ‘fix’ the larger issue of racism in Hollywood casting – moving on from there to analyze how central race remains in children’s toys and animated cartoons, where the ’neutral’ yellow of The Simpsons or the generic LEGO figurine reproduces whiteness as an invisible norm.Visit Dan Hassler-Forest's academic website and follow him on Twitter.
I guess it’s really not a bad page to sample then, as the book constantly relates Janelle Monáe’s work to other media, as well as larger processes that guide our understanding of race, gender, and sexuality. If a potential reader is turned off by this, and only wants to read about Janelle Monáe, then this book probably isn’t for them. It’s also fairly representative for the overall style throughout the book, which I would describe as ’Scholarly Lite’: while it’s conceptual and draws on some heavy-sounding abstract terms like Afrofuturism, intersectionality, and post-capitalism, these ideas are always explained using clear examples and fairly accessible language. So page 99 is as good as any for deciding whether this is a book you’d want to invest time and energy in!
--Marshal Zeringue
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