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Danzy Senna delivers again.

The title will have you thinking that this book is about Black Television, and it is, but it is also about motherhood, marriage, being an artist - specifically being a novelist in a town like LA where most people who write are writing scripts instead of books; being a novelist who isn't quite having the career she expected to have despite the time and effort put forth that you hope would result in a life lived with a little less financial struggle.

Colored Television shows us, through its artists - Jane, Lenny, Brett, Hampton Ford - how the creative industries are more "industrial" then they are creative. When it's time to tell a story the industry has a message it wants to send and an idea of who they want the messenger to be. By the time you finish Colored Television you see how much it costs & pays - mentally, spiritually, emotionally & financially - to step up and become the messenger that the powers that be expect you to be.

Although these serious messages are at work, Senna wouldn't be Senna if she wasn't funny and boy is Colored Television money. Senna is one of the few writers who would make me stop reading just so I can send a text out to some friends quoting a line from her work. There's a particular scene where Hampton Ford talks about all the mixed children and their parents at a birthday party that made me laugh really hard, to the point where I was I realized I was in public and had to make sure that I kept myself together.

I haven't decided where Colored Television ranks on my Danzy Senna Power Rankings but perhaps that's the perfect excuse to reread her work so I can rank them properly. And I just might do it.