“Dispossession is a key analytic for understanding Detroit. In The Detroit Genre, using cultural and literary analysis of comics, films, and literature from Post-Rebellion Detroit until after the 2013 Bankruptcy, Vincent Haddad’s work will forever change how we perceive the most misrepresented city in the U.S. Centering Black voices to show how they resist narratives of dispossession, this brilliantly written book comes at a perfect time so that we can have new ways to talk about Detroit’s history and future. It is a must read!”— Kyle T. Mays, author of City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit
“In an astonishingly vast array of literature and media—from TV to film to music to comics—The Detroit Genre argues that white-centric visions of Detroit in permanent decline must be read alongside and in contradistinction to Black artistic reclamations of the city as a site of potential liberation. Haddad not only demonstrates why Detroit is a critical interlocutor in discourses about race, nation, and class in the U.S., but why it matters that we rethink the city and its meaning now.”— Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Assistant Professor of Black Literary and Cultural Studies, University of North Texas
“This is a brilliant, compelling, and vitally important book. It combines careful and insightful readings of literary and cinematic works with a contextual understanding of the social and economic circumstances to which the works both refer and offer expression. It considers, not just the ideological underpinnings of the works being discussed, but also their affective and emotional registers, and the ways in which they manipulate diverse points of view (both of outside and suburban gazes upon Detroit, and those of the city’s actual residents)."— Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University
“Haddad's wide-ranging study examines Detroit's black culture and history of rebellion against white-centered representations of the city as a symbol of resilience, opportunity, and "comeback." This book provides timely research that convincingly posits Detroit as a genre and a space of black experimentation, creativity, and resistance.”— Kevin D. Ball, Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Wesleyan University