Erasure
by Percival Everett

Erasure by Percival Everett is the first great manifesto for literature by African Americans in the 21st century ▶

Percival Everett’s blistering satire about race and writing, available again in paperback.

Thelonious Monk Ellison’s writing career is in a slump: despite critical acclaim for his previous works, his newest manuscript has been turned down by seventeen publishers. This rejection is all the more painful as he watches the soaring success of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a debut novel by a writer whose only connection to Harlem is a brief visit to some relatives. Concurrently, Monk confronts real-life family crises: his elderly mother is rapidly deteriorating due to Alzheimer’s, and the echo of his father’s suicide seven years earlier still haunts him.

In a mix of frustration and desolation, Monk hastily writes a book intended as a rebuke to Juanita Mae Jenkins’s bestselling work. Though Monk never intended for My Pafology to be published—much less taken seriously—it is, under the pen name Stagg R. Leigh. To his shock, it becomes a literary sensation. The narrative then focuses on how Monk navigates the unexpected repercussions, both personal and professional, of his unintentional success, making this novel both uproariously funny and profoundly poignant.