Jerry and Rodrigo Go to War

A sharp yet honest caricature of the neocolonial, uncritical right on American college campuses. Let me go ahead and say it upfront: I wrote that goddamn novel.  An unsympathetic, self-concerned young professor at a small university in Appalachia is on the verge of a breakthrough. His first book, Coyote Road, has become a huge success. Students are reading his book on campus. Invitations to speak are pouring in from universities and bookstores. There is just one problem: no one believes it’s his book. Some guy named Rodrigo Suarez has taken all of the credit, all of the adulation, all of the accolades, and all the attention.  Thus begins the young professor’s obsessive crusade to expose Rodrigo Suarez as a liar and a thief. In this uncomfortably plausible farce, the indefatigable Steven Salaita drops the hammer on the shallow and disingenuous discourse regarding identity politics and appropriation on American campuses. A sharp yet honest caricature of the neocolonial, uncritical right on American college campuses. Let me go ahead and say it upfront: I wrote that goddamn novel.  An unsympathetic, self-concerned young professor at a small university in Appalachia is on the verge of a breakthrough. His first book, Coyote Road, has become a huge success. Students are reading his book on campus. Invitations to speak are pouring in from universities and bookstores. There is just one problem: no one believes it’s his book. Some guy named Rodrigo Suarez has taken all of the credit, all of the adulation, all of the accolades, and all the attention.  Thus begins the young professor’s obsessive crusade to expose Rodrigo Suarez as a liar and a thief. In this uncomfortably plausible farce, the indefatigable Steven Salaita drops the hammer on the shallow and disingenuous discourse regarding identity politics and appropriation on American campuses.