"Not black enough": African American identity in percival everett's novels

Abstract

The article deals with two latest novels Erasure and I am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett. He is one of the representatives of the writers who belong to a new generation of the black writers. In his literary creativity Percival Everett touches upon racial and identity conflicts which are the most traditional for African American literature. The authors of the article come to the conclusion that the novels are based on the same plot structure demonstrating the compelling impact of African American identity on the protagonist's lives. In his novels the main characters suffer from being not black enough-and being enough black. They blackness is defined by the representatives of contemporary American society, both black and white. Everett questions the racist expectations of society based on skin color and critiques the markers of race-related issues. Percival Everett presents his own vision on the questions of identity and race and this way of interpretation is based on postmodernist aesthetics mostly.