A brilliant satire about the frustration of a black author who can’t get any interest in his books until he writes a book that doubles down on every black trope and stereotype, pandering to white guilt and a narrow view of real black voices. The narrative drives right down the line between the lunacy of political correctness and pandering to cultural stereotypes to make sales.  As a university professor of black literature Jeffrey Wright’s character, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison gets in trouble because a white student is offended when he assigns a book that uses the “N” word in the title and he tells her to get over it. I mean, if anyone should be offended, he should be. She leaves the class in a huff and apparently reports him to administration that leads to his “leave of absence.” Then at a writers’ conference Monk runs into an articulate black writer giving her presentation to a standing room audience during which she reads an excerpt from her best-selling book that is loaded with every racial stereotype and situational trope. Monk is appalled and decides, as a joke, to do his own “from the ‘hood” trash novel under a pseudonym, that he fully expects to be panned for its by-the-numbers portrayal of being black in America. His long-suffering book agent doesn’t want to send it out but he does. Things get complicated when one of the big publishing houses, that never gave Monk’s other books the time of day, are quick with a large contract offer.  Hilarity ensues…

Question is whether the movie will play with those not interested in “black” stories. To think that ones story can only find an audience if the story confirms the audience’s stereotypical beliefs but might find no interest if the story is about the dysfunction of a highly successful group of black siblings. The “rival” black author asks, where are our stories, where is our representation, but then only gives the mostly white audience the stories that they want, limiting black life only to the struggles and injustice but venturing no further. As long as it conforms to the mass audience’s view of what’s “real” that’s what will sell. At the same time, don’t you dare tell the side of the story about how black people were abducted and forced to come to this continent to work and were considered property like livestock and that the economic wealth of whole regions of this country was based on the ownership of humans by other humans. Yeah, let’s pretend that that didn’t happen. It’s an interesting problem. 

As a classroom teacher, I recognized the importance that students of all groups learning to tell their stories and respect the efforts of their ancestors, but not be limited to someone else’s narrative. Not every “minority story” has to be about overcoming injustice or disadvantage. How does one respect the old ways without being limited to living that narrative? I had a marriage and family counselor (white) in the 1980s who was surprised that my father didn’t beat my mother or us kids. He assumed, Mexican family raised in the 1950s and ‘60s, dad was always drunk and physically took it out on us. Yeah, they believed in corporal punishment, but the point was to not do stupid shit that would result in corporal punishment. Duh. But then maybe we were the exception, a Mexican family where all five kids earned college degrees, three of us advanced degrees, four of us worked in credentialed fields, no run-ins with law enforcement, no domestic violence… boring? But, the point is, regardless of what anyone else might think, that’s my family’s story and it has just as much importance and meaning as any family’s story, whether it conforms or not to what someone else might assume. 

American Fiction stares down this problem of the business of telling authentic stories and doesn’t flinch (it does a definite face-palm, but it doesn’t flinch!).

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