James Spooner is probably still best known for the 2003 award-winning documentary AfroPunk. The film focused on the experience of black people in the punk scene and ultimately generated a number of music festivals around the world. Prior to making the documentary, Spooner had been one of those kids inspired by the Do-it-Yourself ethos, the activist inclinations and kinetic energy of the punk movement.

The High Desert. (black. punk. nowhere)  is his coming-of-age graphic memoir about those formative years.  If you are already familiar with his work, this is an interesting behind-the-curtain look at where it all began and what led him there. If you are not already a fan, it is a great place to start.

The book captures the general frustration of high school. But, in Spooner’s case, that was exacerbated by the challenges of being a biracial kid in a mostly white community. A fairly small community steeped in casual racism and peppered with white supremacists, Apple Valley is about a hundred miles from Los Angeles, but it might as well be on a different planet, especially back in the late 1980s and early 90s.

At 368 pages, the book is massive. It is packed with story and interesting asides of hindsight and history. The straightforward black, white, and grey-toned art is a clear, smooth read. Characters are easy to tell apart. The setting moves between the tight spaces of houses and classrooms and the wide vistas of the desert. Natural beauty is not the focus of a teenager with a creative spirit trying to negotiate adolescence while trapped in a conventionally narrow, rule-bound, hierarchical social structure; however, Spooner captures the essence of the high desert. Vast open skies over low growing flora and ranch-style houses often hiding behind ramshackle fences. Expanses of sand and scrub punctuated by ribbons of highway and dusty dirt roads that crisscross the Mojave, offering little in the way of protection or cover. Spooner and his friends are left looking and feeling exposed to the elements of nature, as well as the unsavory attentions of people looking to put folks “in their place.”

As is true for many teens, music informs and galvanizes Spooner. It sets him apart from the crowd and brings him together with like-minded kids. As is clear from the title, for Spooner that music is punk rock, originally discovered on skateboarding VHS tapes. The book is laced with iconic, tone-setting lyrics, all footnoted with band and title credits. Like the original Guardians of the Galaxy comics from the 1970s Epic magazine and subsequent mini-series, it is possible to build a soundtrack for this book by seeking out the songs. A fun aside that is worth the time.

Punk music already offered the raw energy that helped to give direction and focus to the angst of adolescence. In an atmosphere where there is no way to blend in, sometimes the best thing is to try to stand out for reasons of your own choosing. Adopting the look allowed Spooner to stand out by choice, rather than default. He discovers how empowering it is to shave most of his hair and commit to a modified mohawk, often taking the time to straighten and spike his naturally curly hair. Later he turns it into a double mohawk.  Each embellishment of the leather jacket or addition of Doc Marten boots is met with pushback but adds to his perseverance and confidence. While punk has its own look, it is rarely uniform and leaves enough space for individuals to forge a sense of identity within the collective.

At the same time, punk is a lot more than a fashion statement. Like many fans of the Ramones, his friends are enticed by the seeming ease of fame that could be generated by playing three chords loud and fast. His friend Ty has a punk band in need of a bassist. So, Spooner takes up the bass and joins the band. It is comprised of Ty, one of the few other black kids in the school, on guitar, and Ethan, a white kid, on drums. Ethan’s abusive, alcohol-fueled older brother is a Nazi skinhead, set on recruiting Ethan into that fold. The band is a microcosm of the problem for black punks – balancing the chance to express themselves against having to ignore the racism to fit in. Even when the balance should have given them power within the band, the racism doesn’t get called out. Outside of the band, it is even harder. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes it isn’t quite recognized. Sometimes calling it out will only lead to physical violence. Sometimes having a place where the music speaks to the soul is worth putting up with slurs and offensive lyrics or people. Spooner scratches the surface of these. 

A trip to visit his father in New York City over the Christmas holiday gives Spooner a rapid primer on the deeper values of punk as a movement, not just a music scene. It is here that he encounters the full Do-It-Yourself ideal. He learns about collectives and squatter’s rights and gets his first brushes with feminism, veganism, and social justice. 

It is also where he learns about another perverse reality of black history: appropriation and whitewashing. The look he had come to associate with nazi skinheads is based on a look popularized in the 1960s UK. Birmingham was full of Jamaican immigrants who brought their rudeboy and rocksteady ska style and music with them. It was a style taken on by working-class youth, both black and white. although predominantly white. There were black and white skinheads in the early days of the scene.  As the working class fractured in the late 70s and early 80s, those who leaned hard right National Front and sought racist solutions, kept much of the Jamaican look. Eventually, those who did not lean into conservative hate, white nationalist politics created a backlash. Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice (S.H.A.R.P ) was a movement that grew up to counter the racist narrative. SHARP was very much a DIY ethos of policing the scene. Countering the racist narrative varied by degrees. By this time, they embraced punk as well as ska. Even SHARPs are not unbiased paragons. Someone jokes with him “What’s the difference between Nazi skins and SHARPs?” He replies, “Nazi skins hate black people.” She counters with, “Yeah, and SHARPS hate people with hair.”

American media did nothing to distinguish between the two, nor to point out the irony of an anti-black subcultural whose entire look was born out of black culture. An example of the kind of whitewashing that has been repeated over and over. 

In New York City Spooner also meets “straight-edge punks” for the first time. Kids who are into the music, the look, and the politics (or some combination), but who eschew drugs and drinking. This opens his eyes to another important possibility.  He returns to Apple Valley with zines and ideas and a much deeper perspective. At the same time, he’s still a teen boy brimming with anger, confusion, and lots of unanswered questions.

Spooner brings to life the moments that inform the no man’s land between childhood and being an adult. 

The book also deals with universal problems of high school; dating, negotiating social cliques, the pressure to excel from parents, and the pressure to seem to not care from peers. Hormones and inexperience heighten emotions and reactions. Everything seems to be deeply significant. 

Some moments of the book allow the medium of the graphic novel to do what it does best. Page 52 shows the internal emotional devastation that is experienced each time a girl he is interested in says the word that “wrecked me,” Boyfriend.  Occasionally he imagines taking a stand, fighting the bullies and speaking up for those who can’t speak up for themselves. The format allows the fantasy to play out and the reality to cement the painful status quo. These are moments when the graphic memoir is used fully and tells the story in a way that a mere prose volume would fall short.

The length of the book is a boon as well. It allows the narrative to be unrushed, to have the full experience of those difficult years – the feeling that nothing is ever going to change, and then the sudden realization that nothing will ever be the same. It also allows for Spooner to be honest about who he was then, about what he didn’t understand, and what he has learned, and how he has grown. He paints a pretty honest picture of the ignorance, pettiness, and myopia of adolescence, but with the compassion of his more enlightened, still-growing adult self. It neither excuses nor panders, but does explain what he could never have articulated when he was only sixteen. 

One of the areas where he is most honest and demonstrates the most insightful hindsight is surrounding the death of a classmate. Always tragic, but almost a rite of passage, the death of a classmate is often the first encounter with the loss of a peer. It is also a time when kids get a chance to step-up. Or not. In either case, there is a lot to be learned. And a lot of possibility for regret. 

Those growing up today are blessed and cursed with algorithm fueled devices that can keep them immersed in a style or a mood or genre of music with little effort.  At some level, the punk kids making handmade zines and forming collectives are the progenitors of today’s TikTok and Instagram “influencers.”  But they did it without a platform that could reach thousands instantly. Spooner’s generation may be the last that was forced to seek those things out in person, from friends, in specialty stores, and being lucky enough to live close to (or able to visit) a place where like-minded people gathered. The High Desert doesn’t glorify or vilify that reality, but it does make it clear how different things were.

Like a good concert, the tempo of the book changes, the volume fluctuates, the emotional tenor has scale and nuance. Spooner hits a lot of notes. It is a good read. It adds to the mosaic and canon of great graphic memoirs. It will find itself on lists with Alison Bechdel’s Fun House, George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy, Howard Cruise’s Stuck Rubber Baby and Rebecca Hall’s Wake: The Hidden History of Women Led Slave Revolts.  

Spooner had indicated that he intended to write more graphic memoirs about other periods of his life. Recently he seems a little less inclined. If this volume is any indication, those would also be valuable additions to the canon of personal memoirs as well as black punk history and the ways that can forge a path to social justice. 

The High Desert. (black. punk. nowhere) Art and story by James Spooner. Copyright 2022. Published by Harper/Collins Publishing.