“This group also understood that there could not be White people without there being Black people.” Mark Doox’s satirical graphic novel, “The N-Word of God,” turns the racialized worldview on its head. The Columbus, Ohio native’s first book will leave readers scratching their heads, wondering how they ever came to accept the dueling identities of black and white.
“The N-Word of God” is a prophetic retelling of the myths of race, an alternative narrative of American racialization with striking visual imagery that undermines the credibility of white supremacy. It is refreshingly provocative, didactically stringent and blatantly honest.
Mixing biblical language with racialized images of divinity, it is the creation narrative America needs. Ethereal whiteness is contrasted with a fallen blackness for readers to reexamine what we mean when we say that people are colors.
“‘Come here, Darkyness.’ Light taunted. ‘Come here,’” Doox writes. “Light spoke in this manner because Light felt superior to ‘Darkyness.’ Light saw itself as special and that it had a Manifest Destiny.”
It’s gutsy, risky but also hopeful. Explicit in meaning but also equal parts parable, “The N-Word of God” is revelatory for those who have eyes to see it.
It’s a lot to take in. Book in hands, still the full depth and breadth of this work is difficult to grasp. This required reading will require re-reading.
The author and ordained iconographer holds nothing back but offers a mirror, reflecting back to his readers what African Americans have done to themselves in an effort to accommodate white power for the sake of survival by way of “the all-pleasing Grin of Grace through which the ancestors did survive by putting it on daily and constantly.”
The book is more than timely. It is evidence of new world possibilities through Doox’s subversion of pristine Eastern orthodox iconography and the derogatory caricatures that uphold the traditions of race. “My question is this— ‘Can not a Black and White world be equally undone?’” Doox writes.
An unlikely partner, Saint Sambo, also known as Coon Christ, argues for a new “hue- manity.” A book a decade in the making, it is well worth the wait.
It feels almost rapturous. Change is coming soon. Why else would he be able to say this, to display this?
Not in your face but a magnifying glass, it is hard to look away and more than word play, it is an invitation to linger on each page. A bound art gallery, it was hard for me to put this book down. I could not simply walk away.
“Mark is caricaturing this idea of minstrelsy that has been foisted on Black people and even adopted by them, along with the idea of a white Christ,” W. Gabriel Selassie, a professor of Africana Studies at California State University, said of the book.
Doox also calls into question the dehumanization of African Americans and the categorizations of “white” and “people of color.” He paints pictures for us to reconsider racialized descriptions of human beings and offers unparalleled visual aids.
It is a Bible study, a political statement, a social commentary, a revolutionary treatise and a spiritual journey. “The N-Word of God” feels almost otherworldly, drawing the reader up above this racialized reality of dueling relationships and false binaries.
An unorthodox presentation that neither offers a color-blind lens nor a post-racial vision, Mark Doox’s “The N-Word of God” is more than a worthy read. It’s also worth the discomfort if it moves us from what German theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza calls “relationships of ruling” to a new relational orientation.
Doox is unflinching in his analysis of race and its progeny. He doesn’t hold back his pen or his paintbrush and his readers are better for it.
Published by Fantagraphics, “The N-Word of God” says the unspeakable and offers readers a new way of visualizing race. To learn more about Doox’s work, witness and upcoming projects, visit his website: