toSince his first novel in 1998, CaucasiaDanzy Senna, who made him one of the prominent writers of his generation, is known for questioning the experiences of mixed-race people like himself. Twenty-six years later, sharp, self-aware and wickedly funny Color Television follows a writer with similar preoccupations but less success. Although Jane aspires to bourgeois, Black bohemianism—a fantasy fueled by long stays at home with her family for the MFA classmate who sold out and got into television—her ambitious, long-shot new nod yields only silence from her agent. So, lured by the siren call of a Hollywood paycheck, she becomes embroiled in a chaotic pilot development process with a volatile brand producer, unbeknownst to her principled artist husband. As the lies pile up and Jane’s despair grows, Senna delivers a searing satire of class anxiety, the vampire entertainment industry, and the plight of literary novelists in our trivialized times.

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