Percival Everett's Erasure

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Despite efforts by early anthropologists to distinguish between races of humans, biologically and genetically all humans are similar to each other. Which leaves the conclusion that race is a social construct. In America, this major societal aspect yielded by those who have racial superiority complexes, whites, while the darker skin-toned Americans are the most marginalized. In Erasure, author Percival Everett argues against this collective “blackness” which so dominates society’s perception of African Americans. Similarly, Zora Neale Hurston stresses the importance of a person’s individuality rather than their group, ethnicity or race. Both African American writers argue the deconstruction of stereotypes and emphasis of the individual over …show more content…
Monk’s literary prestige comes from his hard-to-read fictional novels and his deconstruction of literary movements. However, the book Fuck is great divergence from his earlier novels and is meant to be satire, which it is not taken as. Audiences rave over Fuck as a serious piece of “African American life”. Monk does not want to be associated with the novel and so comes up with a pseudonym: Stagg R. Leigh. Stagg is a stoic, tough-looking black man who has just gotten out of jail. Monk makes up this fake persona to comment on his discomfort of Black stereotypes. Monk is from an upper middle class family of doctors and has received education from Harvard; he is not what white Americans think of when they think of African Americans. The new stereotype is a gang-affiliated, probably been incarcerated, tattoo-covered body of a black man who stumbles over his “black slang”. Stagg is how everyone views Monk instead of how he actually is. Therefore, Monk feeds readers’ preconceived stereotypes with his Stagg persona and feels as though he has “erased” some part of his identity. Towards the end of the novel when Monk reveals he is Stagg R. Leigh at the Book Awards, he walks to the podium and a hallucinated Stagg Leigh says to him, “Now you’re free of illusion”. (Everett 264). Although Monk uses Stagg to be the reclusive author of Fuck, he realizes that he will never escape from this Black typecast no matter how hard he pushes

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