Lifting the Curtain: Blackness as Performance in Percival Everett's "Erasure"

Max Friedman 5/13/2016 African American Lit – Prof. Wilks

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The danger of a unified genre can be the tendency to accept a singular representation of a population, which in turn perpetuates harmful biases and stereotypes. In the case of Percival Everett’s Erasure, this danger is illustrated in the presentation of an example of what can happen when a broad genre definition is falsely applied to a work of art. As a result of his novel being misunderstood, Monk decides he would rather lose his identity altogether than become something that he’s not. His performance of being void of identity in turn illuminates that racial identity as a whole has been commoditized as performance, especially for those like Monk, who are trapped in the liminal spaces of multi­racial existence. People like Monk struggle to completely place themselves into a specific socially­defined box, and find themselves acting out different racial expectations in an attempt to fit in. This notion of racial performance is furthered by the metafictional nature of the text, in the sense that Everett is able to acknowledge the motivation for said performance, and demonstrate the implications of executing the different available identities. Ultimately, Everett succeeds in portraying the self­aware, stereotype­ resistant protagonist as an increasingly valid perspective. Though he often bemoans the continued placement of his novels within the “African­American” genre despite his best efforts, this categorization can be seen as a beneficial and progressive development. The genre, so full of gritty depictions of “authentic” African­American life, is begging for the inclusion of diverse perspectives. That of the intelligent, mixed­race man who struggles to effectively express his inner turmoil is most certainly worthy of inclusion, if only to combat an antiquated notion of literary racism.