American Gods Delivers a Powerful Black Lives Matter Message

[ismnotwasm]

3. What's powerful to me about this adaptation

Is in the book, the main character Shadow, is racially ambiguous--you just know he's not white, and you guess part black because of a comments minor characters and a reference to the sickle cell disease his mother had. The God Anansi--Gaiman wrote another humorous book starring him and his son--is unapologetically black, but milder in temperament than this early scene depicts. This scene captures a more thorough look at a trickster God.

There are other characters who are considered black in the book. Gaiman, when he writes, makes his phrasing a little different from your usual white author POV, identifying characters as white, as though white is NOT the default.

I've read the book maybe ten times--I do that with books I love. Generally, I hate TV adaptations. This one had me going from mildly impressed in the first episode to going "holy shit, holy shit" Throughout this second one.