num_pages: 272
description: Like James Baldwin's Another Country, White on Black on White, Coleman Dowell's last book, is about the collision of race and sex. Edgar Cayce, a black policeman, is the central figure of the novel. We read Cayce's memoir - in fact written by the narrator who is white whilst Cayce is black, gay. Cayce himself approves of the narrator's impersonation. Dowell's point is that the essence of black is given in its interdependence with the other (white) and vice versa. In White on Black on White, Coleman Dowell has written an ambitious novel whose brilliance resides in the perfect fit between formal innovations and what is being said. "The book touches greatness," Times Literary Supplement.
language: English
title: White on Black on White
titlecomplete: White on Black on White
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Serpent's Tail