In the first 100 minutes or so, “American Fiction” builds to the moment when Jeffrey Wright’s character Thelonious “Monk” Ellison confronts Issa Raes Sintara Golden. In both the film and its source material, Percival Everett's novel Erasure, frustrated academic Monk is haunted by We's Lives in Da Ghetto – Golden's poverty-porn bestseller, which for him reflects everything that's wrong with society's expectations of black art. The success inspires Monk to write his own satirical book tailored to the white gaze. First, he calls it “My Pafology.” Then he changes the title to Fuck.
In Everett's book, Monk never directly encounters the author of Ghetto. But writer-director Cord Jefferson knew he wanted to put the two on a collision course. Because Wright's performance is so good, explains the filmmaker and screenwriter, “it's easy to think of him as a hero and Sintara as a villain.” The truth, of course, is more complicated.
Their eventual confrontation reveals the limits of Monk's narrow-minded worldview. “It effectively freed us from the idea that this film was intended to wag fingers – a rant from Bill Cosby telling young black men to pull up their pants and behave, and that's how we end racism says Jefferson. The conversation is a mind-expanding moment for the protagonist of his film and more. Jefferson says, “I wrote this thing, and I still don't know whose side I'll be on when I leave it.”