"Colored Television" by Danzy Senna, the author behind "Caucasia" and "New People," named a best book of the year by the New York Times Book Review, is our "GMA" Book Club pick for September.
Senna's latest novel chronicles the life of a novelist named Jane, who struggles to create a picture-perfect life with her husband Lenny, who works as a painter.
Jane's dream began after she, Lenny and their two kids are house-sitting in their friend's luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles. The house-sitting gig coincides with Jane's sabbatical, according to a synopsis, giving Jane "the time and space she needs to finish her second novel -- a centuries-spanning epic" that Lenny has dubbed "her 'mulatto War and Peace.'"
"Finally, some semblance of stability and success seems to be within her grasp," the synopsis states.
"But things don't work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood," the synopsis continues. "When she finagles a meeting with Hampton Ford, a hot producer with a major development deal at a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a 'real writer,' and together they begin to develop 'the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies.' Things finally seem to be going right for Jane -- until they go terribly wrong."
According to publisher Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group, "what ensues is a darkly funny ride that explores who gets a say in what 'diverse content' looks like and how career ambitions and artistry interact with marriage, motherhood, and class."
Read an excerpt from "Colored Television" below and get a copy of the book, out Sept. 3, here.
This month, we are also teaming up with Little Free Library to give out free copies in Times Square and at 150 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Since 2009, more than 300 million books have been shared in Little Free Libraries across the world. Click here to find a copy of "Colored Television" at a Little Free Library location near you.
Read along with us and join the conversation all month on our Instagram account, @GMABookClub, and with #GMABookClub.
***************************
Today they were going to an open house in the neighborhood Jane had nicknamed Multicultural Mayberry, the neighborhood where she'd always wanted them to live.
The house was way out of their price range, given that their price range was zero. But who really knew what their price range might be soon? It couldn't hurt to look.
If Josiah offered a lot of money and Lenny sold some paintings, on top of Jane's getting tenure and a raise, who knew? They might become members of the functioning middle class sooner than they thought.
Multicultural Mayberry was only about fifteen minutes from downtown Los Angeles, but it felt like a different world altogether.
Gone was the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome energy of downtown.
Gone was the Manson Family Helter Skelter vibe of the hills.
Gone was the suburban wasteland of Glendale and the trashy mini-mall sprawl of Mid-City.
Gone was the relentless existential hum of the freeway, the racial blight of the LAPD, the handsome lying face of O. J. Simpson and the blank, bewildered face of his murdered wife, Nicole.
Gone was the banally evil face of Mark Fuhrman and the nihilistic cokehead teens of Less than Zero.
Gone were the Menéndez brothers and the white vigilante Michael Douglas played in Falling Down.
Movies over the years had depicted Los Angeles and its outskirts as a kind of dystopian futuristic hellscape -- a clarion warning for the rest of the world about where we were all headed. But Multicultural Mayberry made it feel as if none of that existed.
The most charming aspects of America's past had made love to its most hopeful Obamaesque future, creating this love child of a town.
The sunlight in Multicultural Mayberry was dappled because there were real trees here.
Instead of chain stores and mini malls, its main street was home to businesses you didn't know still existed: A ye olde frame shop. A hundred-year-old soda shop.
A barbershop with a candy-cane pole out front.
There were only three schools in the district, all of them blue ribbon, and the middle-class residents all sent their children to these schools, so you saw kids walking around in clusters, going to visit their friends, who all lived here too.
And yet, this fifties-era set piece was not some blizzard of white supremacy as you might expect. It was famously multicultural. Hence the nickname.
She could see why the filmmakers loved it here. And boy did they love it. Every time Jane came, she saw some street blocked by a craft food-service truck or a phalanx of film equipment.
The films that had been shot here were too long a list to remember. She did know the town had been a stand-in for Philadelphia in "Thirtysomething." And it was most famous for being Illinois in "Halloween." Every Halloween, the town was filled with tourists walking around in Michael Myers costumes, past the actual house where young Michael had slashed his big sister to death.
And yet, for a town that was so perfectly perfect for a horror movie set in Illinois, there was something distinctly Los Angeles about it. LA could be such a chameleon.
It could be anything you wanted it to be. And here it was every small American town or treelined suburban street you'd ever seen in a television show or movie.
Jane had done her research. Apparently, when you owned the right kind of house in Multicultural Mayberry you could make money renting it out for film and commercial shoots.
The local government had its own film office. You could register your house on a website called HomeShoot-Home, where location scouts trawled the photos like porn.
She'd trawled the website too. According to its FAQ page, homeowners stood to make the most money if their house had no palm trees visible from the street and no swimming pool visible from the backyard.
Apparently, it was best to go easy on the stainless-steel appliances. You didn't want the home to look too obviously California. You didn't want to alienate the middle class in Middle America with your Wolf stove.
You got the most requests if your decor was firmly Pottery Barn rather than Design Within Reach.
You wanted your house and street to be able to pass as "Anywhere, USA." Now, Jane actually felt her blood pressure dropping, her body humming, as they cruised down the street, searching for the turn.
"Why are we going to look at a new house again?" Ruby said from the back seat.
"Yeah, why are we looking?" Finn said. "We already have a house."
"I don't want to move again," Ruby said. "I like it on the mountain."
"I know, sweetie," Jane said. "But that house belongs to Brett. That's why we're here. We're trying to find our forever home."
"Who's Brett again?"
"My friend," she said. "The owner of our house."
Lenny sighed. He hadn't thought it wise to confuse the kids more by looking at an open house they could not afford.
He thought they should spend the time looking for a rental in Burbank. He'd shown Jane a few he had found online. They were hideous.
Jane argued that if they moved to a rental in Burbank they would only be yanking the kids up again in a few months when she sold her novel and got her promotion and raise.
They would never want to settle down in Burbank.
So Lenny had agreed to come along, and he'd agreed to wear the yellow polo shirt she'd bought him last week.
"I feel like a fool," he said now, irritable behind the steering wheel. "This shirt."
"You look great," Jane said. And he did. They all looked perfect. "Dignified and articulate," she added.
Lenny snorted a laugh. "That's the most racist thing you've ever said to me."
"Okay. Eloquent and Du Boisian. Is that better?"
"Now you're scaring me." But he was smiling a little bit.
"Did you know that on the Finn planet," Finn said, "we speak our own language?"
"There's no such place as the Finn planet," Ruby muttered, rolling her eyes.
"It's called Satama. Kuka is the word for hello. Can you say kuka-jawani, Mama?"
"Kukajawani," Jane said. "Kukajawani."
"The longer We lives here, the less he remembers about the Finn planet," Finn said. "Soon it'll be all gone."
"Mom, will you tell him to stop talking about the Finn planet?" The therapist at the clinic had explained to her and Finn that a conversation was like a tree.
It grew in branches that flowed out from the trunk. Which meant you couldn't just enter a conversation talking about something random or you would break away from the tree.
"Remember," Jane said now, imitating the therapist's sanguine tone of voice. "A conversation is like a tree" -- she looked up -- "This is the street," she said. "The house should be right up ahead."
"Is that it?" Lenny said, nodding ahead to a cluster of neighbors standing on a lawn.
"No," Jane said, peering out. "That's just a lemonade stand." "Ooh, can we get some?" Ruby said.
Lenny slowed down as they passed the lemonade stand, which was staffed by two little boys about Ruby's age. Both the boys were Black.
Their mothers -- at least the women Jane assumed to be their mothers -- were also Black, one with a short natural, the other with long, straight hair.
They were talking to a white hippie couple with a Labradoodle puppy. The hippie mother was a blonde beach babe type, and beside her was a handsome, shirtless dad wearing board shorts.
Their towheaded child in a princess dress, short-haired, genderless, ran in circles waving a wand while the two families laughed together.
"Look, it's your new best friends," Lenny said, as they rolled past, reading her mind.
Across the street from the lemonade stand and the gathering of neighbors was the house they'd come to see.
There was a realtor's sign out front. It looked even better to Jane than it had in the photos on the website. It was a rich shade of Craftsman brown, and the porch was a wraparound, with wicker furniture and lush potted plants.
The agent was standing on the porch, adjusting pillows on a chair, when they walked up.
Jane thought he looked pleased by the sight of them.
Maybe because Lenny was a Black man wearing a yellow polo shirt. Jane had noticed over the years that everybody loved a Black man in a yellow polo.
She watched the agent take in Finn, whom she had dressed in Max's slacks and red T-shirt and Converse sneakers.
She'd found a new product for his hair that held the curls in place, so Black women wouldn't give her the side-eye at the park anymore.
Jane had done Ruby's hair in tight braids on either side of her face, using plenty of conditioner to smooth the frizz away, and she wore a new outfit Jane had charged at the mall, white leggings and pink T-shirt over a light-green undershirt, sparkly pink sneakers -- a little girl from a Hanna Andersson catalog.
***************************
From "Colored Television" by Danzy Senna. Copyright 2024 by Danzy Senna. Printed by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.