Review: 'American Fiction' is a lacerating and funny satire of publishing and Black identity, with Jeffrey Wright soaring in a rare leading-man role

Satire doesn’t get more pointed, or more perfectly pitched, than in “American Fiction,” in which first-time director Cord Jefferson launches an important conversation about Black identity and white expectations with wit, humor and soul.

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, played by Jeffrey Wright, is a novelist who’s in a low point in his career. His confrontational teaching gets him suspended from his college, and his agent Arthur (John Ortiz) tells him his latest novel isn’t getting offers because publishers want “a Black book.” Monk replies, “It is a Black book — I’m Black, and it’s my book.” 

But Arthur’s message is clear: The publishers want stories that conform to their expectations who Black characters are. Monk runs into an example of this when he encounters Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), an author reading her new bestseller, which is chock-full of Black street language and racial stereotypes. 

Monk’s not in the best mental space when this realization hits. His supportive sister, Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), dies early in the film, leaving Monk to move back to his family’s oceanside neighborhood and tend to his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mom (Leslie Uggams). He doesn’t much help from his brother, Clifford (Sterling K. Brown), who lives in Tucson, has recently gone through a divorce and is in the process of coming out. 

One night, with all this boiling inside him, Monk gets on his computer, and as a joke writes a story about a deadbeat dad and a drug-dealing son, calls it “My Pafology” and gives himself the alias Stagg R. Leigh (after the folk song about a murder, popularized by Lloyd Price). He sends it to Arthur, who soon calls back with the news that publishers want to buy it.

Jefferson, whose TV career includes writing for “Watchmen” and “The Good Place,” makes a spectacular debut as feature film director and screenwriter. He adapts Percival Everett’s novel, “Erasure,” into a sharply drawn and scathingly funny satire of publishing, academia and the many ways white people blithely dictate how Black people are supposed to look, sound, behave and be represented in culture. 

Wright, so solid as a supporting player in everything from “The Hunger Games” to “The French Dispatch,” takes this rare opportunity at leading-man status and is delightful as Monk. He shifts from anger to impish cynicism to soulful romance (there’s a subplot where Monk meets a charming neighbor played by Erika Alexander) with grace and an underlying exasperation at what his joke has revealed about publishers and their unthinking biases.

As the credits rolled on “American Fiction,” I was a bit bothered by the ending, which suggests a multitude of outcomes without seemingly settling on one. As I thought about it, though, I started to think that I was the problem — that, as a white guy, I expect the ending that makes me feel good as a viewer, not what is best for Monk. Jefferson demonstrates brilliantly how impossible it is to please the white viewers and still stay true to himself and his fascinating, complex, entirely human characters.

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‘American Fiction’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, January 12, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout, some drug use, sexual references and brief violence. Running time: 117 minutes.