circumstances facing the black community in the United States

 circumstances facing the black community in the United States

The author of the novel is Thelonious Ellison. The author focuses on discussing his personal opinion on the existence of race and racism. The author outlines that in his opinion, the human race does not exist. However, according to the world that he lives in, he is seen as black. The author is encouraged to quite writing articles about the myths of Greek. Instead, write articles that address the situation and circumstances facing the black community in the United States.

The author of the novel has taken time to go through articles written by other authors. He is disturbed by the issue of authors who write articles that support racism can be successful, yet he does not. The author, the Monk, writes a parody version of a particular novel from a different author. He is, however, very ashamed of himself such that he does not put his real name on the parody of the book.

The parody talks about a young African-American man who lives in the Ghetto of the United States. The man is identified by the character name Van Go Jenkins. Jenkins is involved in the practice of raping multiple women and does not care to pay for the children he has fathered through his rape actions. Later, Jenkins move to the studio, where he intends to dispute about being the father to several children that he fathered by raping various women in his past life. The police storms into the studio with his arrest warrant for raping a woman by the name Dalton. After writing the parody for the novel, Monk struggles to have it accepted by the authorities. He is happy for the income to be generated from the book because he needed it to take care of his sick mother. He is, however, not pleased by the content of the book. He has no courage to be associated with the book and therefore, does not want it to be published. He finds himself at a crossroad to decide on whether to publish the book or not.

Just like the author of the original novel, Monk accepts to attend to several interviews concerning the parody of the book that he wrote. He is so dreadful that he might be mistaken to share the same line of thoughts as the original author of the novel. On one occasion, Monk decides to take his retired mother to a retirement home. It is here that he finds a woman that lived close to a professor that Monk new from his childhood. The two acquaintances finally develop intimacy, and they become lovers. His mother’s conditions get from bad to worse, and Monk decides to take her to a nursing home where she could seek caring.

After a series of struggles to keep up with the original author’s persona, he gets recognized by the National Book Association, and they invite him to sit in a panel for the awarding of the book. He willingly accepts the invitation, but he is ashamed of the name of his book. He had renamed the book to “Fuck”, and he feared that he might find the name among the other nominated titles of books. More significant worries fill him when he thinks of his “Fuck” being nominated to be the winning novel. Finally, his book emerges to be the winning article. The audience and the panellists seem quite amused as Monk heads to the stage in confusion. His confusion is as a result of trying to identify the boundaries between his role as Stagg and himself. Stagg is the original writer of the novel and the actual Monk.

The novel of Everett’s is not a simple story addressing some particular African-Americans. Instead, the book seeks to address the issue of racism the encounters the daily lives of the African-American community. How the novel addresses racism is quite different from how regular people perceive it. In the context of the book, racism occurs to be prejudice and not the other extreme and bitter manifestation of racism. The reception of the novel in society is different. The community does not regard the story as the real human art but instead labels the book as black-art. This is another level of racism. This interpretation of the artwork from Monk changes the size of the audience for the novel. The audience shifts from universal to a specified audience. The specified audience referred to the African-American community. The novelist is fair enough to compliment that the character in the novel is a genius, who is well educated and has a good understanding of mythology and truth. Monks agents discourage him from writing stories about talents but instead, concentrate on addressing issues of black Americans. However, he chooses to write a parody of an existing novel named “My Pathology.” The theme of the book is a description of the expectations of society on black people. It also explains how expectations define the perception of black people in the art industry. The novel is a satire that is designed to expose the genre of arts that is based on racism.

The novel presents the aspect of identity vividly throughout all the scenes in the storyline. The naming and identification of characters is an excellent example of this. Most of the names in the novel mention the protagonist’s emotions of a real artistic genius. In the book titled “My Pathology”, Monk refers to his character as “Van Gogh”. The name carries a satirical meaning. He has no objective of achieving any political issue, but he focuses on describing the real-life faced by the so-called black Americans.

The issue of identity is a vividly discussed in the novel. He is careful to describe himself and persona during the start or the introduction of the book. He even provides a detailed description of his physical appearance. “I have brown skin, curly hair, a broad nose, some of my ancestors were slaves…[t]hough I am fairly athletic, I am no good at basketball. … I graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, hating every minute of it.” He continues to claim that he does no slight element of believing in racism. His belief concerning the issue of race plays a significant role in determining how society appreciates or receives the book. He book continues to define other identities that are visible in the real world that the community is living in. For example, Monk describes his brother as gay, a status that ignited a lot of controversies and debates in society. Monk explains how the issue of his brother being gay caused his brothers divorce with his wife. The wife even tried to seek full .custody of the children from the court because of the identity of Monk’s brother. Monk’s sister presents another exhibition of identity. Her personality is working at a particular medical facility. Monk’s sister is murdered because of her job. The murdering of his sister demonstrates how the society showed little or no respect for value and dignity of lives for the black people in the community.

The black community was exposed to extreme racism. The society was full of racial stereotypes. Monk lets us understand that he had nowhere to run to escape the type of expectations tagged on him merely because of his skin colour. During one occasion, Monks talks of his concern about why his work never succeeded compared to the work of other artists, who wrote their work based on racist concepts. There is the primary reason as to why his work does not perform well in the American market. The idea is that the white community cannot understand the association of retelling Greek mythology with the African-American experiences. An example of this case is the success associated with a novel titled “Juanita Mae Jenkens”. It has a racist theme, and yet it performs so well that it gets to the position of being reproduced as a movie. The other novel titles “We’s Lives I a da Ghetto” has the central themes talking of realism and honesty. After analyzing the success of Jenkens, Monk gets to understand that for one to be successful in the community must acknowledge the stereotypic concepts of the society.