Interview with Mat Johnson, author of graphic novel Incognegro
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Mat Johnson is winner of the prestigious Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction and currently teaches at the University of Houston, Creative Writing Program. Read more about him at Niggerati. Click the thumbnails below to read full-size pages from his new graphic novel, Incognegro.
Carmen: Mat - congrats on all the great media coverage your new book is getting! (New York Times, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle)
Mat: Thanks. It’s a hell of a lot better than watching a book tank, I’ll tell you that.
Carmen: LOL I’m sure. Well you’ve been a co-host on our podcast, Addicted to Race a couple times (episode 57 and episode 61)…
Mat: I miss that. We had fun.
Carmen: …and longtime listeners will remember that former co-host Jen and I used to do a segment called “Racial Spy.” Your book takes the racial spy concept to a whole new level - can you explain to our readers what Incognegro is all about?
Mat: Incognegro is about a mixed race Negro journalist who looks white who investigates lynchings in the 1930s. The story is about when his own brother is framed for a murder, and he must go Incognegro to solve the crime and free him.
Carmen: As soon as I read that synopsis, I was hooked.
Mat: So was Vertigo. I sold them the idea based on the synopsis. [Note from Carmen: Vertigo is Mat’s publisher, they’re an imprint of DC Comics.]
Carmen: How did you come to make Incognegro a graphic novel?
Mat: I have read comics since I was 6 and still read them. I thought this story had the elements of the comic hero, but had the chance to do something new in the form as well. With my prose, the work is character based, prose based. Graphic writing just let me focus on the story and the dialogue.
Carmen: I think the format really works well - as I was reading it, I kept imagining what an awesome movie it would make. Speaking of… I hear there is interest in turning Incognegro into a film. Anything you can say on record about that at this point?
Mat: Nothing I can say on record. But I can say I sold Vertigo the rights and they are very actively fielding offers, trying to find out who is the right creative team to go with.
Carmen: That’s great - I hope it all works out. Anyone you have in mind that you’d like to see play the protagonist?
Mat: I want Wentworth Miller, but who knows? Hey, maybe if nobody buys it, I’ll shoot a crappy low budget version in my backyard with me in the lead. Richard Wright did that!
Carmen: LOL and then put it up on YouTube. Web 2.0-style! How did you come up with the concept for the story?
Mat: Well, I grew up ethnically and racially black, but looking white. The other pieces came to me: learning about Walter White, the birth of my twins, one of which looks more European, the other more African (my wife, Meera Bowman Johnson, has written about it on your site Anti-Racist Parent). It just seemed like a natural story to tell. And I always wanted this hero to be out there. Someone just like me, who turned what many see as an oddity into something priceless.
Carmen: There’s been a long tradition of passing stories in American literature (and pulp fiction). How do you see Incognegro fitting into that tradition, if at all?
Mat: Right. And Passing narratives where in their height with Nella Larsen in the Harlem Renaissance. And of course they go before that to the 19th Century slave narratives. Yes, this fits within that literary mythology.
Carmen: But it seems like the passing story in Incognegro really turns the tables on the genre. A lot of the passing stories, at least those that made it big in pop culture, were essentially cautionary tales, right? The person doing the passing always seemed to get their comeuppance for daring to defy racial hierarchy.
Mat: Well, I have a different concept of race, more distance. Yes, I wanted this to be a different story. This is not a Tragic Mulatto story. While I am interested in the form, I’m also interested in taking ownership of it, not borrowing it. I took the shame and judgement out of Passing, and tried to show it being used in a positive, practical light.
Carmen: What kinds of reactions has the book received so far? Are people scared that a movement of racially ambiguous folks are going to get together to expose white supremacy everywhere?
Mat: LOL… No, it’s been largely positive. The critical reviews have been great, and the personal ones interesting. There have been many whites, particular males, who had no idea that these lynchings ever took place, or if they did didn’t know it happened in the 20th Century. Some thought I was trying to shock, or that the painting of the white in the environment as highly racist was unfair. But that was just the era. They might have been decent people in other ways, but the issue of white supremacy was a given.
Carmen: And I think that’s something that gets lost in the way race is discussed in this country. Racism is still seen as evil - something that only extremists dabble in. But at the time your book was set, racism was the norm. It’s just how things were, and otherwise normal and decent people participated in it because nobody questioned it.
Mat: Right. But there is a cultural amnesia on the part of some. So this book is jarring to them. The San Franscisco Chronicle gave it a nice review but said it was angry. I thought that exemplified that sort of thinking. I assume he means it’s angry because it brought up the topic at all.
Carmen: Right - it’s the “he who smelt it, dealt it” approach to race. The one who brings up racism is the true racist. I get that a lot too.
Mat: Exactly.
Carmen: So what’s next for Incognegro? Do you think there will be a sequel? I can definitely see potential for this becoming a series.
Mat: Next, I try to write something entirely new. I’m working on an idea with Vertigo right now, so we’ll see. But I might have more to do with these characters down the line. It’d be interesting to pick them up in a different era. We’ll see.
Carmen: Oooo - maybe time travel, Lost-style! (Notice I find any excuse to weave in a Lost reference.)
Mat: No problem. Somehow this will have something to do with Linus and the Others.
Carmen: Hehe. Well Mat, where should folks go to learn more about you and your other work?
Mat: I have a site at www.niggerati.com. That has all my books and info. Or they can just look me up on Amazon.
Carmen: Great - well thanks for taking the time today, Mat! And best of luck with Incognegro!
Mat: Thanks, always nice to hang out. Call me when you get those podcasts going. And check me out next year when I do my next project: setting up an online nation for American Mulattos, to be called Mulattopia.
Carmen: LOL sounds good. 
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Latoya Peterson wrote:
*heading to the comic store*
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 10:29 am ¶
china blue wrote:
I’m buying this book!
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 3:41 pm ¶
Dan wrote:
It’s a great book. And I’m a lot more interested in seeing him do a sequel than I am about seeing a movie version.
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 5:00 pm ¶
deesha wrote:
Loved it!
Posted 04 Mar 2008 at 10:36 pm ¶
Torontonian wrote:
Question that has been bugging me: Do African-Americans that pass for white have white privilege? They can infiltrate white supremacists, which is something people of colour cannot do. Their skin colour is not going to work against them in the job market. They can wear band-aids that roughly match their skin colour. They won’t be pulled over for DWB. They have most of the privileges on the white privilege checklist, but not all.
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 1:17 am ¶
Sam wrote:
I’m an avid comic fan and I’m glad that there is another comic that is addressing race in a constructive manner. I’m worried, though, that this book will follow the same road of Robert Morales and Kyle Baker’s Truth:Red White and Black (http://www.amazon.com/Truth-White-Black-Robert-Morales/dp/0785110720/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204701620&sr=8-2)
and Aaron McGruder and Kyle Baker’s Birth of a Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Birth-Nation-Comic-Aaron-Mcgruder/dp/1400083168/ref=ed_oe_p). Both books received widespread mainstream (read: white media) attention, and then quickly dropped from sight. I’m wondering what causes this passing infatuation with literature that plays on white-supremacy in a constructive way, but since I don’t have any idea how it occurs, I don’t know how to analyze whether or not it will happen here. Any thoughts?
I’m also put off by the media’s labeling of this book as “angry.” Carmen’s analysis of the invocation of reverse racism and anger as an excuse for talking about race at all is interesting. But I also think that it’s a distancing tactic, to make it seem like this is something we should recognize, but not with the immediacy that Mat Johnson gives it.
Carmen’s comment, “I think that’s something that gets lost in the way race is discussed in this country. Racism is still seen as evil - something that only extremists dabble in. But at the time your book was set, racism was the norm. It’s just how things were, and otherwise normal and decent people participated in it because nobody questioned it” is a good one. I don’t think that I need to tell anyone reading this blog that racism is still alive and well and that it’s still “the norm;” that its manifestation has just changed. So how does that come into the coverage of the book? How does that play out in the book itself? I’ll be excited to find out when I pick it up this weekend.
What do other folks think about the way it’s been covered in the media or the book itself?
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 3:17 am ¶
Tony wrote:
Already read the book, loved it.
I’m mixed from Louisiana but most of my family is from Mississippi, my (white) mom remembers a lynching in her hometown when she was growing up.
I do have one issue not with the book, but the interview, specificially the quote
“…people participated in it because nobody questioned it.”
There were people who questioned it, just not the majority.
Even in deep southern Mississippi, where my parents would get death threats in the 70s/80s.
When the Lynching took place there were white people against it, people who informed the FBI.
Unfortunatly the local authorities still refused to do anything.
But there was never a time when “nobody questioned’ anything.
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 4:12 am ¶
deb wrote:
Ooooh, I can’t wait to purchase it!
For about six minutes I entertained the thought of writing a graphic novel. I even registered for a course on comics last Fall. AND I even considered writing a passing story about a guy infilitrating a white supremacist hate group! Alas, I dropped the class.
I’ll leave this to the pros.
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 9:35 am ¶
visitor wrote:
It’s great to see Mat’s book getting such great press–no only is he an incredibly talented writer, but as a former student of his I can attest to the fact that he is a genuinely awesome person (and professor).
Posted 05 Mar 2008 at 5:36 pm ¶
meownette wrote:
Ahhhhh, a typo in the spelling of San Francisco…sorry, I’m just a touchy native, and my eyes immediately lit upon it.
Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 12:34 am ¶
tasha wrote:
Torontonian,
Yes, but that kind of goes without saying. if a black person is able to and does pass for white, then said person will likely benefit from white privilege. From a Black-American perspective, “passing” is the most extreme form of not white, but light skinned privilege. There are all sorts of media devoted to the subject. Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, the Tipping Point) is a very fair skinned black man, (and Canadian, BTW), and he’s written about how reactions to him have varried based on how close cropped his hair is, at any given moment, as opposed to grown out in his trademark do (I guess you could call it an afro). You could read Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” or just watch the movie. It’s about a college professor named Coleman Silk, who, unbeknownst to his wife, children, and colleagues, has been passing for white for the past 50 years.
“But it seems like the passing story in Incognegro really turns the tables on the genre. A lot of the passing stories, at least those that made it big in pop culture, were essentially cautionary tales, right? The person doing the passing always seemed to get their comeuppance for daring to defy racial hierarchy.”
@Carmen
Um, I don’t always see “passing” as being so heroic. Let’s be honest here. Passing tends to have more to do with assimilating, taking advantage of light skin privilege, and being rewarded for being perceived as something other than black, not some noble feat.
Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 9:55 am ¶
Carmen Van Kerckhove wrote:
@tasha When I say “defy racial hierarchy” I mean it from the dominant group’s point of view: that by passing, some blacks were gaming the system by using their light skin to gain the privileges that would otherwise be denied to them.
In the context of Mat’s book though, passing definitely does become a heroic act.
Posted 06 Mar 2008 at 10:33 am ¶
dnA wrote:
I literally CANNOT WAIT to read this comic.
Posted 07 Mar 2008 at 2:27 pm ¶