An African-American author and professor with a PhD, a genius with excellent writing ability, crafts an acclaimed novel. Another author, feigning he is a fugitive from the FBI, misspells words and uses a vernacular dialect. He writes about a rough, poverty-ridden Black experience in America. Which book would you most likely want to read? Which book has the greatest chance of being a best-seller and turned into a movie?
What if the two authors are the same guy?
This is just a fascinating, outrageously funny, yet tragic, satire about how race is treated in the American literary world. “American Fiction” is based on the book “Erasure” (2001) by Percival Everett, who has written 15 other novels, including one with a bizarrely catchy title: “A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel).”
The level of genius and honest talking couched in wry, intelligent satire is Everett’s calling card. After Cord Jefferson, writer, director, journalist, and essayist, read his book, he reported, “Twenty pages in, I knew I had to write a film adaptation. By the time I finished the book, I knew I had to direct it.”
What sells? What do readers, Black and White, want to read about?
When Ernest Hemingway wrote about a White man’s frustratingly sad experience in the Spanish Civil War, when John Steinbeck wrote about a White family’s tragedy during The Great Depression, and when Louisa May Alcott wrote about White sisters growing up during the Civil War, these books weren’t classified as White History or White Fiction. They are just under their last names in the Fiction section. Jefferson and Everett notice that books about the African-American experience are classified under Black History.
Note: The Library of Congress has catalogued Tony Morrison’s best-selling novels under the subject headings: Fugitives from Justice Fiction, and African Americans Fiction. Steinbeck’s work is catalogued under American Fiction. Think about it.
“American Fiction” brilliantly weaves several stories that reflect American, not just Black, life: a parent developing Alzheimer’s, a sister’s death, a brother’s revealed sexual preference, a professor’s suspension for not being culturally sensitive and someone with communication troubles falling in love.
Mix that with a conflicted Thelonius “Monk” Ellison (seriously played by Jeffrey Wright) crafting a bogus bio under a pseudonym with a fictitious fugitive identity who falls in love with Agnes (delightfully played by Leslie Uggams), the defense attorney across the street from the family summer home. And still, within all that there is still the plot of the outrageously best-selling novel and soon-to-be blockbuster film penned by a fugitive. What’s the FBI’s going to do?
It all works cleanly. The audience is never lost or confused. Nominated by the Golden Globes for best Best Motion Picture and Best Actor (Jeffrey Wright) – both in Musical or Comedy division – this is brilliant writing, directing and acting that both entertains and tweaks our perspective.
Credits
Director and Screenplay: Cord Jefferson
Based on the book “Erasure” by Percival Everett
Producers: Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson, and Jermaine Johnson
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Traces Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adram Brody, Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown
Cinematography: Cristina Dunlap
Editor: Hilda Rasula
Music: Laura Karpman
Release: Dec. 15, 2023
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