The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspapers by Aaron McGruder

The Boondocks

African American Literature Book Club - The #1 Site for "Readers of Black Literature"

Home • Author Home • Up • Author Profiles • Book Profiles • Writer's Resources • Reviews • Events • About Us • Buy Any Book • Advertise

"The Boondocks is a deliciously amusing work that creatively challenges us with intense substance, cleverly disguised as a humorous comic strip. Aaron McGruder is one of the most important voices of his generation and a true credit to his race" ~ Tavis Smiley, Author and Host of BET Tonight

"The Boondocks works because McGruder lets lots of opinions and agendas fly; he's not on any soapbox rant. Best of all, he lets you decide who's right and who's wrong -- assuming you're not too busy laughing." ~ Newsweek

"The most appalling of McGruder's reckless charges was that BET 'does not serve the interest of black people.' Our response to this slanderous assertion is that the 500-plus dedicated employees of BET do more in one day to serve the interest of African-Americans than this young man has done in his entire life." ~ Robert Johnson, President and CEO, BET Holdings, Inc.

The Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read the Newspapers by Aaron McGruder
Click to order via Amazon

Format: Paperback, 128pp.
Andrews & McMeel Publishing
Pub. Date: August 2000

Learn more about Aaron McGruder

The Boondocks information Excerpted from an interview of Aaron McGruder by Keith Phipps for The Onion
Since the mid-'90s discontinuation of The Far Side, Outland, and Calvin And Hobbes (themselves holdovers from the '80s), the world of comic strips has seemed pretty dull. One person changing that is Aaron McGruder, whose strip The Boondocks made its debut last spring in more than 150 papers, a nearly unprecedented number for a launch.

Set in the suburbs, The Boondocks follows the lives of several children, primarily two brothers transplanted from South Chicago to live with their grandfather. One, Huey Freeman, is a deeply opinionated Afrocentrist; the other, Riley "Escobar" Freeman, is a posturing would-be gangsta.

From his strip's debut in daily papers, McGruder--whose work had previously appeared in The Source and the college paper of his alma mater, the University of Maryland--already seemed to have hit his stride, finding the right combination of winning characters, effective gags, and storylines that didn't shy away from racial issues and other political material. This latter facet served as the initial focus of most of the attention directed at The Boondocks (it landed the strip on some papers' editorial pages), but McGruder hopes, and The Boondocks' continued quality suggests, that audiences will find more to like. So far, McGruder has taken on everything from the identity problems of biracial children to his disappointment in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, to the hot button issue of lawn-mowing. Currently developing an animated version of The Boondocks with director Reginald Hudlin in addition to turning out his strip, McGruder recently took some time to talk to The Onion.
Read the interview at The Onion - http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3536/avfeature3536.html