“John Jackson’s brilliant excursion in search of ‘racial sincerity’ is, as the title implies, a true adventure. It is as fast-paced and engaging as a novel, witty, sympathetic, and lyrical. Tweaking the dilemma of the anthropologist’s gaze, he takes his field notebook into the heart of Harlem as ‘Anthroman’—and is received as part friend and long-term resident, part super-educated superhero, part comic book. This book is a splendid and fascinating study of what it means to be ‘real’—and not just when it comes to race.”--Patricia J. Williams, Columbia Law School

Patricia J. Williams | Patricia J. Williiams

"To more effectively delve into the ’relationship between race and sincerity’ and its implications for the academic and popular debates on who or what is "authentically" black, Duke University cultural anthropologist Jackson regularly assumes the guise of his alter ego, the ’ethnographic superhero Anthroman,’ a cross between ’Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn.’ Billed as ’art conspiracy theory, part rant, part novelistic storytelling, part autoethnography,’ Jackson’s book provides discerning readers with a provocative analysis of contemporary black subcultures: middle class blacks in a gentrifying Harlem who are split between a social justice-minded old guard and a neo-capitalistic new guard, conspiracy theorists, Black Hebrew Israelites of Worldwide Truthful Understanding and hip hop artists as exemplified by Mos Def. The strongest sections are his field interviews with residents of Harlem and Brooklyn, who furnish perceptive and unpretentious observations of their experience. Some of the interactions are thought-provoking: A conversation with a young man convinced that a fruit drink sterilizes black men gives the author pause; he returns the drink for bottled water. Others are more disturbing, such as the arrest of an individual who blares NWA during a neighborhood incident. The author’s powers of observation are indisputable."

Publishers Weekly