In the

terrific new film American fiction Jeffrey Wright stars as a mid-career literary author

who finds that the books he loves to write aren't selling.

What is selling though is books by black authors that he finds reductive

and drowning in stereotypes.

And so he sets out to write the ultimate black novel under a pseudonym with all the

tropes and simplifications he thinks publishers expect. But his life gets very

complicated when it turns out that, well, he's right.

I'm Aisha Harris.

And I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about American fiction on pop culture happy hour

from NPR. Joining us today is Ronald Young Jr. He is the host of the film and

television review podcast Leaving the Theater and the podcast Wait for

it which has recently appeared on some end of year lists of great

podcasts. Hi Ronald! Hello what an introduction thank you.

American Fiction is the feature directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, a writer whose credits for

television include Watchman, The Good Place and Station 11, a lot of highly regarded and

very different shows. He wrote the screenplay here based on the

2001 Percival Everett novel Ereacher. Jeffrey Wright plays the protagonist Monk.

Aesaray is Sentara Golden, a younger novelist whose hit book is the very definition

of everything that Monk disdains.

After seeing the success of Sentara's book and being told by his agent that his books aren't the kind of quote-unquote black writing publishers want,

Monk decides to write a parody of the struggle fiction that he hates. Under a pseudonym he writes it and

...