Percival Everett’s Erasure takes a look at how racism affects numerous elements of our lives that we might be unaware of. An superb example of this is when Ellison ventures into the bookstore to look for his novel only to understand that they are in the Africa-American literature area. A location, as he factors out, that is wholly inappropriate for the type of novels he writes and tends to make it not possible for anybody who may be interested in his re-workings of obscure Greek texts.

I believe the point Everett was trying to make with the bookstore scene is how racial classification permeates are existence in a ways that we don’t even believe about. Referring to someone’s work as African-American fiction is automatically labeling it much less than. It is already becoming made an &quotother&quot to other texts they might be extremely comparable and this othering tends to make the work much less appropriate to more audiences.

And when the text has undergone this othering then it automatically shuts off any conversation about what the text is really about. There are numerous functions found in the African-American literature area that don’t belong there. Biographies of MLK Jr. or Sojourner Truth ought to be found in the same location I’d find functions on Roosevelt or Reagan. Brenda Jackson, or Bebe Moore Campbell ought to be found exactly where I’d find Jude Devereaux or Sandra Brown. But that is not what occurs. Rather if it is by a black individual and in the situation of numerous biographies, about a black individual then it is automatically black book area which sends out the idea of : Hey, this book is by somebody black, and should be about somebody black and consequently only for black individuals. That type of attitude instantly shuts off an entire audience that might find a use for or satisfaction in a novel whose only downside is that it is created by a black individual,

How does this othering of Ellison’s work match into the other themes of othering that happen in Erasure? Is this labeling of functions by blacks as automatically African-American literature a type of racism? And how does the labeling of work as African-American literature ultimately impact Ellison and his capability to make it as a writer in Erasure?

(C) 2005 Tamika Johnson

Tamika Johnson is a freelance writer and owner of PrologueReviews.com. If you would like to read more content articles by Tamika or would like to have your music, film or book reviewed visit http://www.prologuereviews.com