Oreo

Reissued in 2015 from New Directions, this early-seventies punnilinguistic mistresspiece deserves a broader readership. An anarchic comedic romp, abounding in ambidextrous wordplay, mixing black and Jewish slang with technical and mathematical language, this novel is a brassy performance, sadomasoch Leggi tutto

Pros: 1. Half-black, half-Jewish female protagonist who's brilliant, tough, and empowered. 2. Vocabulary-expanding; full of language games and puns. 3. Lots of insane, almost magical realist stuff happens, but since the plot is anchored by parallels to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur it never

A picaresque novel from the 70's with a Black Jewish female protagonist who roams the streets of New York sporting a cane while seeking her father (much like the mythological Theseus)? Yup, journalist, writer an comedy author Fran Ross has created a wild, experimental mixture of genres and text form Leggi tutto

Google wasn’t around when Oreo was first published in 1974. You are hit with Greek mythology and Yiddish right away and just the look of the pages of Fran Ross’s novel about an Afro-Jewish girl’s quest to find her white father can discourage or intimidate. Oreo , by an African-American writer who die Leggi tutto

I loved it when I first read it June 2015, loved it more this time. I laughed so loudly as I read it that my family kept thinking I'd broken my toe or something. Not just a great book. It's one of a kind.

Fran Ross' Oreo is an incredible novel that lays the common overlooked magic of racial and cultural mixings, assimilation and multiple identity bare. Its humor, irony, satire and sarcasm has an incendiary, sociological truth, as the best stand-up comedy used to do, and sometimes still does. The fact Leggi tutto

This book was too smart for me. I was left feeling pretty "lowly" for not "getting it". I enjoyed the parts that clicked but most of the book was chock full of fanciful language that I didn't have the time to bother looking up each sentence (just to feel included in the joke). I completely understan Leggi tutto

A hell of a lot of fun but also, as it should be, cheekily dealing with a lot of not-fun, fucked up shit about power and race and gender and all the rest. But if puns don't float your proverbial, and if your patience for playing is fraying, don't bother

My favorite people are women and my favorite women are smart women and my favorite smart women are funny smart women, and Fran Ross is that and more. Her only novel, OREO, came out in 1974 and was forgotten almost immediately. Though it and some spec scripts got her out to Hollywood to write for an

This is one of the smartest, funniest, most original books I've ever read. Wildly inventive; it reminded me more of Kurt Vonnegut than any other contemporary African American woman's writing.