Black Ass|A. Igoni Barrett

Photo: Shayera Dark

What happens when you go to bed a black man and wake up white? That's the question A. Igoni Barrett's novel Black Ass answers with a blend of sharp humor and keen intelligence.

Furo Wariboko, a young, unemployed Nigerian, suddenly discovers he's a white man in Lagos. With his newfound skin, he easily secures himself a marketing job alongside a car and driver befitting of his complexion. And though he doesn't consciously try to take advantage of it, he finds people doing the work for him, from the restaurant owner who offers him more meat to the otherwise disdainful security man who treats him with kindness.

But Furo understands his situation is peculiar. He speaks with an obvious Nigerian accent, doesn't have the huge bank account some Nigerians automatically associate with whiteness, and has a black ass. Yet, knowing all this doesn't bother his magnanimous, new girlfriend, who, unknown to him, has designs on his whiteness.

Although Furo's white skin undoubtedly grants him privileges, it also proves burdensome: Taxi drivers refuse the standard fare from him until a Nigerian woman slyly bargains in his stead; he suffers sunburns, and endures the discomfort of being gawked at by strangers. His condition also exposes him to the warped mentality of ascribing superiority and intelligence to whiteness/foreignness, as in when his boss is mistaken for his assistant.

In order to align with the erroneous expectations of those around him, Furo is forced to shed aspects of his identity as a Nigerian. But while he doesn't take pride in his new skin, he actively avoids those who knew him as a black man in a bid to keep up the charade.

Black Ass interrogates and mocks the perception of race in Nigeria through the eyes of Nigerians, demonstrating how the most cunning minds vicariously benefit from qualities they themselves don't possess.

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