Cord Jefferson is ready for everyone to argue about American Fiction. “That, to me, is the dream,” the writer-director tells Esquire. “All I want is for people to go see it with their friends and debate.” Jefferson will surely get his wish. American Fiction, which opens in the UK this week, is a crackling satire about art, commerce, and identity that's destined to ignite heated conversations.
The film stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a frustrated novelist seething with righteous anger about the literary world’s appetite for reductive tales of stereotypical Black life. Early in the film, Monk attends a reading by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), the author of a breakout novel called We’s Lives In Da Ghetto; where the public sees a gritty bestseller, Monk sees a galling sellout. At his breaking point, he furiously pens a new novel: My Pafology, a pandering potboiler packed with every Black stereotype imaginable. “It’s got deadbeat dads, rappers, crack,” he jokes to his agen