‘American Fiction’ asks: What, in our society, should a Black writer be?

“American Fiction” is a serious-minded satire about race relations that is often exasperatingly at odds with itself. A first feature written and directed by Cord Jefferson and adapted from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, “Erasure,” it serves up an overload of potential bull’s-eyes. Some darts hit, others miss.

Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (a marvelous Jeffrey Wright) is a Black novelist and college English professor with a short fuse. We first see him attempting to introduce his class to a story by Flannery O’Connor, the title of which bears the N-word. A white student angrily objects to the usage. Monk curtly responds, “With all due respect, I got over it. I’m pretty sure you will, too.” As a result of this contretemps, the college places Monk, to his great annoyance, on a leave of absence. 

Monk does not play the political correctness game. Neither, as we soon discover, does he play the race card. When he travels to Boston to speak at a literary conference, the sparse attendance at his talk is contrasted with the thronged presentation of a new novel by a well-spoken Black writer, Sintara Golden (an impressive Issa Rae). She doesn’t sound anything like the title of her bestselling book, “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.”

Monk listens to the reading, attended by a rapturous, mostly white audience, in silent disbelief. His own novels, we have learned, don’t sell. His latest, a variation on Aeschylus’ “The Persians,” can’t even find a publisher. And yet here is a smart, well-educated woman who, in his view, has achieved success by pandering to her readership. The scene crystallizes the film’s central quandary: What, in our society, should a Black writer be?

Decamping to his dysfunctional family’s beach house in Martha’s Vineyard – after spending time with his sister (a sharp cameo by Tracee Ellis Ross) – Monk realizes his mother (Leslie Uggams) requires expensive medical assistance. To fund it, or at least vent his cynicism about Black writers and the publishing business, he writes a quickie novel. Titled “My Pafology,” it’s full of gangs and cops and violence. He uses the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh – and promptly gets a high six-figure offer. 

Hoping to back out of a ruse that has already gone too far, he tells his publishers, all white, that they must change the title to “F---.” 

To his dismay, they unexpectedly agree. “It’s very Black,” they enthuse. Soon, Hollywood comes calling.

The deepening convolutions of this gambit play out amid a simultaneous “This Is Us”-style family dynamic on the Vineyard involving Monk’s gay, plastic surgeon brother (a lively Sterling K. Brown). There’s also a fraught romantic liaison between Monk and Coraline (a superb Erika Alexander), a beachside neighbor and public defender. She has actually read, and admired, his novels.

The targeting in this movie of the publishing world and Hollywood for cashing in on a spurious Black “authenticity” strikes me as valid. But the film also sympathizes with the populist idea of giving audiences what they want, or think they want, even if they are being pandered to. 

The film never allows for the fact that “serious” Black novelists – such as James McBride, Marlon James, Colson Whitehead, and Jesmyn Ward – have indeed become bestselling writers in our culture. Monk’s only path to commercial success is to sell out. The movie also doesn’t account for any vitality in the Black entertainments he’s decrying. The satirical bite in “American Fiction,” as amusing as it often is, is also somewhat toothless.

It was probably not intentional, but Monk’s despair comes across as sour grapes. Do we even know if his Aeschylus adaption was any good? Also, when has it ever been easy for talented novelists of any color or gender to get published?

In a way, the confusions and contradictions of “American Fiction,” though they limit its effectiveness, are also unavoidably a part of what it’s all about. What stayed with me in the end was Monk’s lament: “We’re more than this!”

Peter Rainer is the Monitor’s film critic. “American Fiction” is rated R for language throughout, some drug use, sexual references, and brief violence.