Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Afro-Punk, graphic novel, james spooner

Afro-Punk Director, James Spooner, Creates New Punk Graphic Novel

Published Sat, 11 Dec 2021 07:23:10 -0600

Afro-Punk is a documentary from 2003 directed by James Spooner, exploring the roles of African Americans within what was then an overwhelmingly white punk scene across America, and taking place as the world shifted with the galvanizing power of the internet. The film focuses on the lives of four African Americans dedicated to the punk rock lifestyle, interspersed with interviews from scores of black punk rockers from all over the United States. Fans of the film and the music inspired an alternative movement, that later became the annual Afropunk Festival beginning in 2005.

James Spooner is now turning his 1980s teen fandom experiences and earlier punk experiences into a new graphic novel, The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere. to be published by Harper/Mariner Books on the 17th of May, 2022.

The Afropunk filmmaker sounds out his 1980s teen fandom in this debut graphic memoir that promises to rock with high notes hitting on race and class issues in the emergent punk scene. A formative coming-of-age graphic memoir by the creator of Afro-punk: a young man's immersive reckoning with identity, racism, clumsy teen love and belonging in an isolated California desert, and a search for salvation and community through punk. Apple Valley, California, in the late eighties, a thirsty, miserable desert. Teenage James Spooner hates that he and his mom are back in town after years away. The one silver lining—new school, new you, right? But the few Black kids at school seem to be gangbanging, and the other kids fall on a spectrum of micro-aggressors to future Neo-Nazis. Mixed race, acutely aware of his Blackness, James doesn't know where he fits until he meets Ty, a young Black punk who introduces him to the school outsiders—skaters, unhappy young rebels, caught up in the punk groundswell sweeping the country. A haircut, a few Sex Pistols, Misfits and Black Flag records later: suddenly, James has friends, romantic prospects, and knows the difference between a bass and a guitar. But this desolate landscape hides brutal, building undercurrents: a classmate overdoses, a friend must prove himself to his white supremacist brother and the local Aryan brotherhood through a show of violence. Everything and everyone are set to collide at one of the year's biggest shows in town…

Weaving in the Black roots of punk rock and a vivid interlude in the thriving eighties DIY and punk scene in New York's East Village, this is the memoir of a budding punk, artist, and activist.

The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere will be published by Harper/Mariner Books on the 17th of May, 2022.

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