Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

The more I read, the more I realize how one-sided my education was .Ms. Thompson does a spectacular job of tackling timely questions in a brief and non-pedantic manner.

This book offers a critical history of blackface, giving important context to current conversations being had in the public sphere. The writing is detailed, precise, and thoroughly researched, giving a truthful, matter-of-fact tone to the piece. I will highly recommend this book to my sphere of influence, as I think it is deeply necessary reading.

Object Lessons is my favorite new series. Every one of them that I've read has been awesome, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more!

Another incredible addition to the Object Lessons series, Blackface presents the reader with a brief but highly informative cultural history of the blackface.

Not many histories are as succinct and well-researched within the same package. I learned this title belongs to a series of microhistories published by academics well-suited to the respective topics. I truly enjoyed learning about the history of blackface throughout Western entertainment history and how if still affects certain aspects of today’s well-known media production like Tyler Perry Studios. This is a great book for those readers, likely non-POC, who want to know about blackface and how it impacts our society, but lack the time to fully immerse themselves in a research project.

A brief yet highly informative cultural history of blackface. Thompson writes with intelligence and wit; this is not a ‘dry’ history book at all. As other reviewers have commented, I would have actually preferred this to be longer, to enable the author to elaborate on her arguments and to delve into her case studies in more depth, although I realise that the ‘Object Lessons’ series are intended to be short and succinct. Overall then, there is much to applaud here, and everyone could learn something from this book.

I'm a firm believer that if you're really going to discuss a subject you need to know more than one or two things about it. (And personally as a classic movie fan this is a topic that does come up every so often.) This books gives more than everything you should know, from the then and now to everything in between, going as far back as it's historical origins.

This book is perhaps shorter than I would like it to be. I understand the series Object Lessons is made to be short and in that regard it does its job very well.
There are interesting points being made in this book (particularly the question "why didn't the black kids thought about doing white face when dressing up as someone white?"). I was aware of the recent controversies regarding influencers and brands and had a basic knowledge of the history of black face. This book although short, was still able to show me historical events of relevance that I was not fully aware or didn't know in detail. The tone is not too academic and is pretty accessible. Overall it was an interesting quick read that would recommend as a starting point to people interested on the subject.

<i>Blackface</i> is a short, academic, and very readable history of blackface, from its earliest origins to the present day. Ayanna Thompson carefully builds a picture of a practice which is not simply about a white person darkening their skin and wearing a wig, but which is an act that allows white people to 'perform' blackness, while not allowing black people to 'perform' either whiteness or blackness.

Thompson makes it clear that she is not interested in labelling specific examples of blackface as racist or not racist. Instead, she focuses on centring blackface as part of popular culture, from Shakespeare, to minstrel shows, to black-and-white films, to SNL. In this way, she is able to show that it is a tradition that is continuing, and which is still affecting both black and white viewers and performers - albeit in noticeably different ways.

Anyone already engaged in discussions around race, racism, society and culture is unlikely to be surprised by </i>Blackface</i>, but the examples Thompsons gives and stories she traces are undoubtedly both fascinating and sobering. If you're looking to learn more about the shared histories of theatre and racism, or simply to be able to better understand and articulate why blackface is not OK, this is the book for you.

An ARC was generously provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

A timely, urgent, and succinct book that everyone interested in pop culture should read immediately. Thrilled to include Blackface in April’s “Hollywood Confidential” list of notable new titles about the people, culture, and business of moviemaking (pegged to the Academy Awards) for Zoomer magazine’s book section. (article at related link)

This short non-fiction goes into the history of blackface and how it has been presented in different forms of entertainment since the 1600's. It is framed by the author talking about an event at her kid's school of which they had to dress as historical figures. Through this event at a predominately white private school, some of the students did blackface to be figures like MLK. The school's principal didn't understand the problem.

The most interesting thing to me in the book was the long history of blackface. I mean it dates back to Shakespeare. I liked the discussion of white innocence when doing blackface as a reason to not be offended. She dives into this pretty deeply.

I think that if you are interested in the topic, this is definitely worth your time reading. I learned a lot more about the history of blackface that I didn't know.

An important and timely book on the history and use of Blackface by a Shakespeare scholar and as part of the Object lessons series of short books about the hidden history of ordinary things. Ayanna Thompson was moved to write this book when several 8 year old children adopt Blackface in order to represent their heroes at her child's school and the school failure to recognise why this is problematic. She goes on to present a detailed and thoroughly researched history of Blackface in the UK and the US, before outlining all the reasons why it is problematic and the defence that many stars have used of 'white innocence' is unacceptable. She also finishes the book with how some Black male performers have also conducted their own version of Blackface by putting on fat suits and cross dressing to mock Black women. A short book but a far from easy read, it is an important addition to the books about representation particularly in the media and how it is important especially when it comes to race.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for a review.

This is an interesting idea for the Object Lessons series from Bloomsbury. Blackface seems like more of an idea or practice than an object, yet semantic quibbles aside, Ayanna Thompson presents a concise and compelling overview of the subject. Blackface discusses the history of the practice, and in particular, Thompson helps us understand how power imbalances between white and Black performers have contributed to the unequal dynamic in which white people often feel ok performing Blackface and “Blackness,” but Black people do not have the same privilege of whitening their faces and performing a kind of “whiteness” for entertainment. My thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the e-ARC to review.

The book begins by framing the question based on a person experience of Thompson’s. Her daughter was in Grade 8 and participated in a day where students had to dress up as famous historical people they had researched. Some of the white children in the class had researched Black people (great) and decided to wear blackface as part of their costume (not great). Thompson brought this to the attention of the school administration. They were resistant to acknowledge this as a systemic problem or take any steps to prevent it from happening again. And so, Thompson starts us off on our journey. She wants us to understand that blackface isn’t merely “white people being racist” but that rather it has a very coherent history one can learn if one does the research (or, you know, reads this book based on Thompson’s research).

My positionality, by the way, is that I am a white woman in Canada. Prior to reading this book, I already knew blackface was bad, and I was very much aware of issues with politicians and celebrities like our very own prime minister. I had a simplistic understanding of blackface’s history as it relates to minstrel shows, Jim Crow caricatures, Al Jolson, etc. But if you have much the same understanding and think that means you don’t need to read this book, then you would be wrong.

Thompson takes us all the way back to Shakespearean England—yes, that is right, circa 1600. She examines how acting at that time was full of race- and genderbending, since actors were white men. Actors took pride in performing blackface to be more “authentic.” I also had no idea that Dartmoor Prison had such a thriving theatre company, so that was an interesting aside. Thompson traces the direct line of influence from Shakespearean England through to actors of the nineteenth century. Along the way, she points out how Black actors struggled to be taken seriously as thespian talents, whereas white actors donning blackface were usually lauded for their performance.

All of this information is crucial for us to understand the turning tide in the 20th century, how we got from the Jazz Singer to “hmm, that makes me uncomfortable” with Laurence Olivier’s Othello. See, Thompson’s crucial point here is that it’s not enough for white people to walk away knowing that blackface is bad because it’s racist. We need to understand how blackface perpetuates stereotypes about Black people, and how white people’s feeling of freedom to perform blackface is itself a privilege embedded within our white supremacist society.

At the end of the day, this is not about Grade 8 white kids dressing up in blackface. But it is about how a school administration, upon learning of this, shrugged it off as no big deal. It is about the incredible amount of advocacy Black people have to exhaust themselves doing merely to get an iota of respect white people receive by default. It is about challenging simplistic or incomplete understandings of our history—which is, again, not a failure on the parts of ourselves as individuals, but a failure of the systems in which we’ve been raised.

Blackface is an object lesson all right—an object lesson in the tangible, cultural costs of white supremacy and how it creates a gulf between peoples where none need exist.

Another excellent addition to the Object Lessons series, this time about Blackface, its history, significance and cultural context – something I’d paid little attention to before, thinking it was merely something to do with minstrelsy and now totally politically incorrect and outdated. But this book explains how it is still pervasive in an insidious way and has most definitely not disappeared from our contemporary world. Illuminating, entertaining and thought-provoking, the book raised my awareness of the subject significantly. I just wished the author hadn’t been quite so keen on scattering the text with exclamation marks…..

"Part of what propels the use of blackface is white people’s belief in their white innocence. When defending, explaining, and even apologising for the employment of blackface, white people rely on the logic and rhetoric of their innocence. In fact, they frame blackface as either an act of celebration and love, or as an act of imitation and verisimilitude. Of course, this assumption rests on the white supremacist belief that white innocence trumps all, including a violently racist history". ⁠
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If you've been following me for a while, you probably know by now much I love the Bloomsbury Object Lessons series. This new release is an extraordinary addition. It examines the history of blackface and clearly explains why it's never acceptable. Author Ayanna Thompson highlights the 400-year-old performance history of blackface, showing us the legacy of white performance of blackness. ⁠
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She demonstrates that it was always a white endeavour, and that to be a black character onstage was to be performed by a white actor in racial prosthetics. Thompson takes us on a journey through the first performances of Blackness on English stages, the birth of blackface minstrelsy, contemporary performances of Blackness, and anti-Black racism. ⁠
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Prompted by an event at her son's private school where children were encouraged to inhabit a chosen character as part of a project, and witnessing (with horror) a few white children using blackface, Thompson embarks on discussing the matter with the school principal. Turns out he's not really aware of the legacy of blackface minstrelsy. What's the big deal? And so, she embarks on this project. ⁠
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Why are there so many examples of public figures, entertainers, and everyday people in blackface? And why aren't there as many examples of people of colour in whiteface? These are some of the questions that she investigates in more detail. ⁠
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I found the book totally compelling and highly informative, and I can only wish that more people get to read it. ⁠
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Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my advanced digital copy. ⁠

I found this interesting. I think the content was great and it is an important and uncomfortable read. The writing style could have been better However and I did not finish.

A great little intro to Black minstrel shows and the racist history behind them, while it’s short and covers a wide variety of supporting arguments, reading much like a dissertation, it’s informative especially for those of us who need to consciously unlearn the things woven into society, the things we have the luxury of not thinking about... like kids in Blackface for a presentation on a fave historical figure.

This book was fascinating. As a white woman the idea of 'blackface' is something I was familiar with due to the pinbages on the Rowntrees jars. Other than that I wasn't fully aware of the context of blackface.
I was shocked to discover that white actors/presenters/comedians/influencers are STILL 'blacking-up' in 2020!! Whaaaat???!! I was reading this book shocked! Shocked that this was still happening, and shocked that I was completely unaware of it happening.

I wish this book was longer and more in depth - but because of it being so short and concise it was very easy to read and understand.
The only reason I didn't give this book the full 5* was I found it a bit repetitive.

Blackface by Ayanna Thompson is a short book about - you guessed it - blackface. I am very thankful for getting to read this ARC. My country, the Netherlands, has its own blackface tradition in the shape of Zwarte Piet/Black Pete that is still very much present in the twenty-first century.

Thompson explains blackface's origin in old Shakespearean plays in England and how that evolved into minstrel shows. Then with older and more modern examples, she explains how Black bodies have been and are portrayed in movies and on television. She also explains how white innocence is used as an excuse when it turns out that celebrities and/or political figures have done blackface. "I did not know better." or "I did it because I love/feel inspired by him/her/them." etc. See this following quote:

"Up until this current moment, white people have believed that performing blackness was a white property that could -- if done with the proper intent -- demonstrate, physically, one's love of black identity and culture. Of course, this assumption rests on the white supremacist belief that white innocence trumps all, including a violently racist history."

Thompson was clear in her chapters and wrote in an easily understandable language. I would love for her work to be translated into Dutch so there will be more understanding about why our tradition of Black Pete has to stop. I truly recommend Blackface to my fellow Dutchies and others who are still ignorant about it.