Product Description

This scathingly hilarious political satire—produced from a collaboration of three of our funniest humorists—answers the burning question: Would anyone care if East St. Louis seceded from the Union?

East St. Louis, Illinois (“the inner city without an outer city”), is an impoverished town, so poor that Fred Fredericks, its idealistic mayor, starts off Election Day by collecting the city’s trash in his own minivan. But the mayor believes in the power of democracy and rallies his fellow citizens to the polls for the presidential election, only to find hundreds of them turned away for trumped-up reasons. Even sweet old Miss Jackson—not to mention the mayor himself—is denied the vote because her name turns up on a bogus list of felons. The national election hinges on Illinois’s electoral votes and, as a result of the mass disenfranchisement of East St. Louis, a radical right-wing junta led by a dim-witted Texas governor seizes the Oval Office.

Prodded by shady black billionaire and old friend John Roberts, Fredericks devises a radical plan of protest: East St. Louis will secede from the Union. Roberts opens an “offshore” bank (albeit in the heart of the U.S.) to finance the newly liberated country, and suddenly East St. Louis becomes the Switzerland of the American heartland, flush with money. It also begins to attract a motley circus of idealistic young militants, OPEC-funded hitmen, CIA operatives, tabloid reporters, and AWOL black servicemen eager to protect and serve the new nation.

Problems set in almost immediately: Controversies rage over the name and national anthem of the new country (they decide on the Republic of Blackland with an anthem sung to the tune of the theme from Good Times), and local thug Roscoe becomes a warlord and turns his gang into a paramilitary force. When the U.S. military begins to move in, Fredericks is forced to decide whether his protest is worth taking all the way.

Birth of a Nation starts with a scenario drawn from the botched election of 2000 and spins it into a brilliantly absurd work of sharply pointed satire. Along the way the authors lay into a host of hot social and cultural issues—skewering white supremacists, black nationalists, and everyone in between—drawing real blood and real laughs in equal measure in this riotous send-up of American politics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #659851 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-22
• Released on: 2005-02-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The Boondocks creator McGruder, filmmaker Hudlin and Why I Hate Saturn cartoonist Baker are a kind of dream team, and this work (drawn in Baker's animation-storyboard style) has a fairly hilarious premise. When the virtually all-black population of East St. Louis, Ill., is disenfranchised en masse in electoral shenanigans that result in a George W. Bush–like Texan governor being elected president, the impoverished city decides to secede from the U.S. Renaming itself "Blackland," the city becomes a wildly rich money-laundering capital. Baker is a gifted caricaturist—every facial expression and bit of body language he comes up with is funny—and the first two-thirds of the book is loaded with witty riffs (a national anthem to the tune of the Good Times theme; a fight over whether Tupac or Biggie should be on the nickel) and slyly ferocious jabs at institutional racism and a certain commander-in-chief. The final act, though, falls apart. The U.S. going to war with Blackland over a new alternative energy source should be a natural for comedy, but it bogs down in too-serious drama and a non sequitur battle. even McGruder and Hudlin's snappy dialogue loses steam. The work has the air of an unproduced film treatment—a terrific concept with some impressive talent behind it but not enough follow-through to make it completely satisfying.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
A Texas governor wins the presidency when some 1,000 blacks are barred from voting because of phony felony convictions, and the Supreme Court endorses that outcome. So the mayor of East St. Louis, home of the disfranchised, takes the famously poor, black-majority burg out of the union. With money from one old pal (now a billionaire) and the prowess of another (now a jet-fighter pilot) and administrative aid from the youthful New African People's Party and, heading the new nation's military, gang boss Roscoe, Mayor Fred Fredericks, first seen collecting trash in lieu of a bankrupt sanitation department, keeps pulling rabbits out of hats throughout an unpredictable, frequently hilarious satire reminiscent of the great 1940s moviemaker Preston Sturges' best stuff. In fact, film writer-director Reginald Hudlin brainstormed the story with The Boondocks comic strip creator McGruder as a prospective movie, turning, after big-fish producers failed to bite, to ace comics artist Kyle Baker for this graphic novel, which, despite screenplay origins that have been incompletely sanded down, remains highly entertaining. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“A memorably funny satire. . . . You can’t put the book down.” —Boston Globe

“Truly funny . . . a tale that will outlive its ties to current headlines.” —Washington Post

“Hilarious satire reminiscent of the great 1940s moviemaker Preston Sturges’s best stuff. . . . Highly entertaining.” —Booklist

“Birth of a Nation is a brilliant, biting, and witty commentary on the chaos of the 2000 election. Hudlin and McGruder have achieved that rarest of things: a political satire that is also an extremely important and moving work of literature, an achievement for any writer or any artist at any time. Birth of a Nation is a unique event in the history of African American literature.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“With a creative team this talented, Birth of a Nation is a must-have book for everyone who loves comics and spirited African American storytelling.” —Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage

“Makes The Art of War seem like The Art of Bore.” —Chris Rock

“Reggie and Aaron are doing to comic books what Public Enemy and NWA did to the music business.” —Ice Cube

“Not since Mad magazine in its prime has a comic combined art, politics, and culture into such a hilarious and page-turning story. Don’t be disenfranchised—buy this book now!” —Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone

“Birth of a Nation is the wickedly funny marriage of The Boondocks, House Party, and The Battle of Algiers. Be prepared to laugh yourself silly while repeating over and over again—‘how true.’” —Julian Bond, chairman, NAACP

Customer Reviews

Impressive
Leading up to purchasing "Birth of a Nation" I was unsure about the direction the book would take. From the previews I read,(and the direction that "The Boondocks" has taken post 9/11) I was anticipating a heavy-handed, Michael Moore style beatdown of the Bush administration. Not that I am dissapprove of sticking it to GW (and his cabinet) at every opportunity. I just figured that this book be a case of preaching to the crowd.

Much to my delight, "Birth of a Nation" not only provides biting social satire, but a rich story line and vibrant characters. This reminds me why I started reading the boondocks in the first place and why McGruder was hailed as a wunderkind when he first entered the comic world. I don't think anyone slept on Bebe's Kids or the House party, but Hudlin has been doing it big for a while now. The brilliance of Mcgruder and Hudlin has to go alongside other prominent duos of our generation: EPMD, Outkast, Madvillain. I was not previously familiar with Kyle Baker's work, but his illustrations are definately on point. The style is similar to the way Bebe's Kids was drawn.(in case some were expecting The Boondocks' anime/manga style of illustration)

Not only putting the Bush administration of blast, "Birth Of a Nation" pokes fun at several areas of the Black community(generational gap, nationalism, materialism). I imagine that this book would be hard to follow if you are not immersed in Hip Hop culture. If you avoid rap music and Spike Lee movies this book might not be for you. Otherwise, if you enjoy Dave Chappelle, okayplayer.com, and Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism/Rap lists, I guarantee you will enjoy it.

Bonus points for finding

- find lyrics from Mobb Deep and Notorious BIG songs
-grown up versions Jazmine, Caesar, and Riley

Ain't we lucky we got it!
What's the story behind the story? Well, movie director Reginald Hudlin and comic strip creator were hanging out together at the San Diego Comic Book Convention. They were trying to come up with an idea for a movie, when Hudlin suggested the idea of his hometown of East St. Louis seceding from the United States. They wrote a script based on that idea, but they couldn't get a movie studio to make the film. So, rather than just let the script sit on the shelf, they decided to turn it into a graphic novel. Rather than have McGruder draw it himself, they got the brilliant Kyle Baker to illustrate it. So, how is the final result? It's great, in my opinion. It's a very funny book with great movie storyboard style illustrations. No doubt it will seem funnier to a liberal than it would to a consevative. But anyone who enjoys Aaron McGruder's Boondocks comic strip should also enjoy this book.

Aaron McGruder`s woman problem
I purchased this book with high hopes. I'm a fan of the Boondocks comic strip (I actually called the New York Daily News to complain when they pulled the strip after 9/11!) and I regularly watch the animated TV series on Adult Swim.

And, I must say, McGruder does challenge American racism and electoral fraud head on...as I expected.

But, when it comes to the sistas, McGruder falls short...

His mysogynist tendencies, hinted at in the TV version of the Boondocks (most notably in the episode unfortunately entitled ``Guess ho`s coming to dinner``), are full blown here.

With the exception of little kids, old ladies and Condoleeza Rice, all of the Black female characters in Birth of a Nation are presented as loose women of low morals.

Several of the characters (in particular, the lightskinned ones) are drawn with absurdly huge breasts of Pamela Andersonesque proportions.

But, top-heavy or not, pretty much all of the sistas in this book throw themselves at the men, pretty indiscriminately.

In fact, the only moral adult Black woman in the book is the Condolezza Rice stand in!!! Other than her, the only Black women who don't act like hookers are little girls and grandmas.

McGruder`s Black MALE characters have a broad range - honest politicians, sleazy businessmen, viciously cunning gangsters, brave fighter pilots, hard working blue collar guys, young hustlers and comic jokers.

But his Black FEMALE characters are all sleazy loose women, who will do it with anybody...

Is that what Brother Aaron thinks of our sistas???

That alone is reason enough to NOT buy Birth of A Nation