Point of View

The novel is written from the third-person point of view. This third-person narrator’s access is limited to the protagonist Jane Gibson’s psyche. This means that the narrator inhabits Jane’s consciousness throughout the entirety of Colored Television and renders the narrative world according to Jane’s regard for it. The way Jane sees, processes, and responds to her world thus dictates the narrative mood, conflicts, stakes, and plot line.

This third-person limited point of view enacts Jane’s ongoing struggle to claim who she is without shame. If the author had written the novel from Jane’s first-person point of view, Jane’s character would appear more confident and assured about who she is. It is because Jane is caught in a liminal space between her Blackness and whiteness, her fiction writing and television writing careers, her present and her future, she feels...