Will I love Erasure?

Percival Everett’s Erasure is a sharp, daring satire that wields raw wit and playful style to provoke both thought and uneasy laughter. Beneath its layered humor lies a pointed commentary—sometimes mocking, sometimes mournful—on the pressures placed on writers to define and market themselves through racial identity.

The inspiration for the acclaimed film American Fiction, this novel is as entertaining as it is incisive—provided the reader isn’t easily rattled by Everett’s liberal use of the F-word.

Percival Everett’s book speaks to me because it challenges the trite rule that a black author must write about the (stereotypical) black life–so, by extension, I must write about white women?

It’s a concept that goes against the very definition of a novel and denies a writer’s ability to be creative. Everett’s perfect satire of a writer’s life ridicules this bogus concept of authenticity. It’s a serious topic, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

I loved this book most because my late father recommended that we read it together when it first came out in the early 2000s. To me, it demonstrates Everett’s brilliance with a pen, and he captures the Black experience in America well, especially identity negotiation.

He was speaking about racial assimilation before I even knew the word for it. I love how he narrows the gap between the Black and the Black who prescribes to white norms. The voice actor who read the book was so entertaining that I have listened to it almost daily for the past five… show more.

Erasure’s book within a book set up targets publishing, contemporary society, and, without mentioning her name, Oprah Winfrey. The plot is terrific. An African American author who is told his work isn't “Black enough” knocks out a satirical retelling of Richard Wright’s Native Son under a pseudonym. The book “My Pafology” — which he retitles “Fuck” — is boosted by a TV personality and becomes a huge hit, its satirical elements lost on the world. Hilarity ensues. The novel echoes literary scams like James Frey’s Million Little Pieces, but Everett, an under-recognized… show more.