In his new graphic memoir The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere., filmmaker and now comics artist James Spooner revisits the cultural terrain of his 2003 documentary Afro-Punk to again examine Black identity within the overwhelmingly white subculture of the punk music movement. In the new book, Spooner, the biracial child of a divorced interracial couple, revisits his teen years growing up in a poor, working class, mostly white suburban town, presenting his own social alienation, the impact of punk’s anti-authority music and ethos on him, and the racial conflicts within a high school punk music scene teeming with white power advocates and violent teenage wannabe neo-Nazis. In this ten-page excerpt, during a transformative visit to the Lower East Side of New York City, Spooner discovers the Black roots of punk music and the anti-racist progressive wing of the punk movement. The High Desert: Black. Punk. Nowhere. by James Spooner will be published this month by Harper.
