AMERICAN FICTION ★★★½
117 minutes

“I don’t even believe in race,” says Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. His agent’s response: “The problem is that everybody else does.” So goes an early scene in American Fiction, the debut directorial feature by former journalist Cord Jefferson. Nominated for five Oscars, including best picture, it’s a zippy satire about the hot topic of representation in literature, what that means and who it’s even for.

Jeffrey Wright plays the curmudgeonly Monk, an author whose prolific output has not equalled commercial success. He’s frustrated at the state of play in an industry full of “white publishers fiending black trauma porn”. One where his manuscripts are rejected for not being black enough (“they have a black book – I wrote it!” he exclaims incredulously), and his published books are shelved as “African American studies” despite being works of fiction.

Living proof is in the commercial and critical success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto by rival author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), which is full of the stereotypes Monk abhors. At a literary event, he sees the way the erudite Sintara code-switches, and he despairs.

But when family tragedy strikes and funds are needed quickly, Monk begrudgingly puts pen to paper and writes a novel featuring “deadbeat dads, rappers and crack”. The title: My Pafology – later changed to F---. The pseudonym: Stagg R. Leigh, a fugitive on the run.

Monk is not convinced anyone will buy it, but, no surprises here, it’s an immediate hit, with a $750,000 advance and $4 million in film rights. “The dumber I behave, the richer I get,” the writer deadpans. It’s the success he’s always dreamed of, but at what cost?

American Fiction is based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, and like Rebecca F. Kuang’s Yellowface, it squarely takes aim at the shallowness of the publishing industry and how diversity has become a box-ticking exercise or, more cynically, a marketing goldmine. As Monk’s agent Arthur (John Ortiz) says, “White people think they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.”

Indeed, the white characters often, and rather condescendingly, tell the black characters how to feel and think, with one white character saying, “It’s essential to listen to black voices right now” while speaking over the two only Black people in the room.