It's here:  the book that shows you how to talk about race without talking about race.  Satirical observations on identity, judgment, and assumptions and unconscious bias. Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome is a humorous view of contemporary American urban reality from the unique perspective of a Detroit newspaper columnist and copy editor-turned-cab driver--and after the laughter comes the weeping.  For example, Oneita is at a party having a polite conversation with a stranger who thinks Oneita said, "I'm a nigger" instead of "l'm a knitter."  Oneita is a master at handling awkward situations and Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome is a handbook to etiquette in the racially charged 21st Century.

Praise for Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome

"Damned funny, scalpel-sharp, and moves like a rocket. Like everything Oneita Jackson writes, I read this through in one sitting. She never wastes a word, lands every punch, and her prose has the cleansing power of a storm no one saw coming." - Dave Eggers, international bestseller 

"Jack Kerouac called it the ‘naked lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.’  These moments of revelation are afforded by the greatest works of literature—Zen teaching stories, Sufi tales about Nasruddin, Aesop’s Fables.  Everyday life is delusional because human beings are heavily defended from reality:  When there is a murder next door, they say, ‘This never happens in our neighborhood,’ and then there is the notion ‘I can do no wrong’ that results in the delirious cases of road rage that are so puzzling and pervasive.  In Oneita Jackson’s Nappy-Headed Negro Syndrome, we come face-to-face with the deepest taboos in the American psyche.  Jackson, with humor and compassion, shows us the quality of the paradoxes that make us who we are—that make us so stubborn, dangerous, and unrepentant.” - Jon Woodson, author of Summer Games and Endowed, a Comic Novel