FORMER JOURNALIST, Cord Jefferson says he made American Fiction ‘for everyone tired of these lazy, monotonous stories’. For the record, he’s done a good job. 

The Emmy award-winning writer and story editor’s directorial debut is a refreshingly told narrative about Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a respected professor of English literature and a novelist who is frustrated with how the establishment profits from “Black” entertainment based on tired and offensive tropes. 

To prove his point, “Monk”, played by Tony, Emmy, AFI, and Golden Globe award-winning actor Jeffery Wright, writes his own outlandish ‘Black’ book under a pen name, propelling him into the hypocrisy and madness he claims to disdain. 

Not to downplay the real-life effects felt by those who have been unfortunately diagnosed with the condition, but few films manage to capture the almost dissociative identity disorder that is a regular and normal thing among Black people who are just trying to get on in their everyday lives. 

Dumbing down at work to get ahead is an inherent part of the journey, no matter how talented you are. 

Added to that brilliantly highlighted facet in American Fiction , is the unique set of familial complexities that are often the unspoken burden shouldered by any individual, irrespective of race. The movie is well fused with wit, humour and sugarcoated truth. 

Standout performers starring alongside Wright include creator of the Peabody award-winning HBO series, Insecure, Issa Raye who plays the role of author Sintara Golden, Tracee Ellis Ross stars as Monk’s sister, Lisa Ellison, and Sterling K. Brown is the younger brother, Cliff Ellison. 

The story is based on American author and distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, which was written two decades ago. 

Jefferson says having been inspired by ‘the book’s many overlaps’ with his life, he felt compelled to adapt it. 

“Erasure was published more than 20 years ago, yet the questions it asks remain painfully relevant: Why is American culture fascinated with Black trauma? Why aren’t Black professors depicted in books and films as frequently as Black drug addicts, or Black rappers, or Black slaves?” Jefferson says. 

He adds: “Why is it that white people with the power to green light films, books, and TV shows have such a limited view of what Black lives should look like? 

“I’ve asked myself these questions many times before when I hear yet another slave movie is going into production, or when I see that another talented Black actor has been hired to portray a drug dealer, pimp or single mother who needs to overcome her unenviable lot in life. 

“This reductive view of Blackness makes me angry. And I’ve funnelled that anger into American Fiction.” 

That ugly blueprint on how Black people, Black talent, Blackness, has been portrayed over and over which Jefferson alludes to, transcends the borders of America, which is what makes this movie a relatable one. 

Many Black people will see themselves on a similar journey to characters Monk, Lisa and Cliff Ellison or Sintara. In the movie, Monk’s latest novel fails to attract publishers who claim the author’s work “isn’t Black enough.” 

He travels to his hometown of Boston to participate in a literary festival where all eyes are on  the first-time author of a bestseller titled We’s Lives In Da Ghetto, a book Monk dismisses as pandering to readers seeking stereotypical stories of Black misery. 

In addition to his rofessional turmoil, Monk’s family experiences tragedy and his ailing mother requires a level of care neither he nor his complicated and self proclaimed black sheep of a brother can afford. 

One night, in a fit of spite, Monk concocts a pseudonymous novel, My Pafology, embodying every Black cliché he can imagine. His agent submits it to a major publisher who immediately offers the biggest advance Monk’s ever seen. 

As the novel is rushed to the printers and Hollywood comes courting, Monk must reckon with an identity of his own making. 

Speaking with Lifestyle on the standout elements that resonated immediately with him when he received the script, Wright said: “I had not read the book prior but I started reading the script and really, the first scene was the hook in the mouth for me. 

“I thought that it was a conversation that I wanted to have publicly and that it was sharply drawn and speaking to this absence of fluency in race language and absence of understanding how to contextualise race language. 

“I thought it was a necessary conversation for the times, particularly as it relates to younger generations and their attempts to wrestle with issues that we have been wrestling with since the beginning.” 

He added: “As I read further, while I really appreciated the social commentary and the satire, what I was really drawn into in an emotional way was the family dynamic and the portrait of a man who finds himself in an instance at the centre of his family crisis. 

“That was something that was very personal for me. 

“And in some ways as we’ve made the film and as we’re presenting the film, in spite of the other social-political elements of the film, that family I think is the most radical aspect of our film and the most subversive because it’s a family that we don’t often see in cinema. 

“And it’s extraordinary for that reason in its ordinariness in its simple humanity.”

Watch the full interview with Wright and Jefferson on the Voice here