Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut American Fiction is in select theaters now, and is receiving some of the best reviews of the year. It’s high up there for me, as well, and can’t wait for more people to check out this brilliant satire that skewers a literary world for its racist hypocrisy.
Accolades are already beginning to shower the film and its cast, led by Jeffrey Wright as frustrated author Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, who is sick of reading trite Black stories full of stereotypes. His solution is to create a fake persona and write a book that also reduces Black people to racist tropes, only to be appalled when the book is a bestseller.
What’s great about American Fiction is that Jefferson tells a complete and complex story full of romance, family drama, tragedy, and more. Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Erika Alexander and Leslie Uggams fill out a stellar cast who bring it all to life.
Here’s the synopsis: AMERICAN FICTION is Cord Jefferson’s hilarious directorial debut, which confronts our culture’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes. Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a frustrated novelist who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes. To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish “Black” book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain.
American Fiction expands to more theaters on December 22nd, before going nationwide in January. You can check out my interview with Cord Jefferson here, and my review here.
