News at Eleven: What does the trickster-curator want?

For one thing, to overthrow the literary executor of black writing. To [Kevin] Young, white critics who read slave narratives "simply in terms of authenticity do two quite damaging things: first, they read (white) skepticism back into the slave's writing and thus limit the 'freedom' of black authorship; second, they ignore or downplay the African-American trickster tradition, itself related to black rhetorical strategies like lying." It is not just creation per se but specifically creation of the counterfeit that "provides a means of black acquisition of authority (even as so-called authenticity is called into question)."

from The New York Times: Race, the Remix

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