Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks
and Whites, Love and Death
Frank E. Dobson, Jr.
Plain View Press, 2010
In many ways, Frank Dobson’s Rendered Invisible: Stories o f Blacks and
Whites, Love and Death takes over where Ralph Ellison’s 1952 classic Invisible
Man left off. To my mind one of the finest novels of the 20^*^ century, Invisible
Man is both an iconic literary work and a valuable teaching tool in courses
across the humanities curriculum. I believe this will be true also of Rendered
Invisible: Stories o f Blacks and Whites, Love and Death if it gets the exposure
that it deserves.
Dobson is first and foremost a brilliant writer, winner of the Zora Neale
Huston/Bessie Head Fiction Writer’s Award, who has published not only fiction,
but essays and poetry as well as plays, two of which have been produced.
“Rendered Invisible,” a novella, the major work in this collection takes us
inside the black community terrorized by a serial killer 30 years ago. While most
of us are familiar with Charles Manson (nine murders) and the Son of Sam (six
murders), few outside the community are aware of the monstrous white
supremacist Joseph Christopher who wanted to ignite a race war and murdered
13 black men in the early 1980s, cutting out the hearts of two of his victims and
stabbing three others who survived the attacks.
Dobson’s account of the events is almost impossible to put down as he
makes the characters visible and exposes the butterfly effect as their fear
contorts their lives. Using a collage technique, he takes us from multiple
perspectives from barber shop conversations, to news reports, to Johnny’s story
in which the life of one of the characters we met in the barber shop comes as
close to spiraling out of control as does that of original Invisible Man.
Now being developed as a play, “Black Messiahs Die,” the first of the five
bonus stories, is a gut wrenching tale of the life and death of a talented young
basketball player murdered by the police in a case of racial profiling and
illustrates the ambiguity inherent in sports and the hopes of young black men. In
“Homeless M.F.” the protagonist comes close to a self destroying vengeance
and transcends it, leaving himself still a “homeless M.F.,” but a morally
victorious one. The other three stories are equally compelling.
Those teaching courses in race relations, the short story, black history, and
black literature will find Rendered Invisible an invaluable text. Those simply
looking for a good read will find it equally compelling. It will undoubtedly
become a text in my next Short Story class.
Felicia Campbell, University of Nevada, Las Vegas