OBJECTS & BOOK ARTS > Book Arts

altered book, book arts, mixed race narrative, mixed race identity, racial passing literature, African-American literature, the art of paper

A BOOK BEGETS A BOOK: ALTERED "AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN", 2017 - 2025

Altered Book - Paperback book, Mi-Teintes paper, printed text on copy paper

As I have been reading and researching in an ongoing way James Weldon Johnson's coming of age, confessional, racial passing novella, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, I have been altering a copy of the book.

I have altered the book by 'bookmarking' excerpts of the narrative. The story (actually a fictional autobiography) is graphically conveyed via the visual language of colors, 'tones' and shapes. The layers of 'key' bookmarks comprise one composite 'bookmark' encapsulating layers of content and the arc of the ex-colored man's story.