Four Black Japanese gay men team up to exact revenge in a culture where discrimination is deep-seated. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize-winning author. A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, Jackson Alone is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender-a frank exploration of identity, race, and queerness in contemporary Japan.
Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist, Jackson, but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He's mixed race-half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks like a lot like Jackson.
When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he's not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who's responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people who've wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.
This is a page-turning exploration of race, digital culture, belonging, and the hostility of societies that are supposed to protect us. Written with bite but also with surprising tenderness, Jackson Alone asks complex questions about how we see ourselves and how we see others, as well as what it really means to get revenge.
