Autobiography, Adventure, Psychological Thriller and Suspense
One of these genres is not like the others. We figured that you super smart Shmoopsters would have had autobiography tagged for this book from the start. Griffin writes about his own experiences, in the first person, based on facts. That's basically the definition of autobiography right there. But what about the other two—don't they come out of left field?
So what's an adventure novel? It's an exciting novel with a lot of death-defying feats and danger to the main character, isn't it? Like Indiana Jones. Of course, Griffin isn't nearly as cool as Indy, but his adventure certainly does keep us on our toes. We don't know what will happen to him, and seeing as black men were still lynched without penalty in these days, death and physical harm were possible ends to Griffin's little experiment.
Now, when you think about psychological thrillers, you think about movies like Inception or The Shining. In other words, these are movies that mess with your head… or at least the main character's head.
Griffin is most definitely having his head messed with. He feels like he loses his identity, and by the end of the book he's waking up screaming in the middle of the night because he's so traumatized by the hatred that he feels from the people around him. As much as this book is about racism, part of what made it popular is probably this look into the emotions and psyche of Griffin and how he changes throughout the experiment.