The goal of the Franklin Library’s One book, One Community program is to help build a better sense of fellowship through a shared reading experience.

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What are we reading?

 

Beginning February 1, 2025, we'll be reading Erasure by the winner of the 2024 National Book award for his novel James, Percival Everett

Discription:  Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is an author and professor of English literature. Though Black himself, he claims not to believe in race, citing a number of ways in which he doesn’t fit the mold of the stereotypical Black American: he didn’t grow up in the inner city or rural south, for instance, and he’s not great at basketball. Still, he realizes that there are some bigoted people who wish to harm him because of the color of his skin, and so he allows that, according to society’s standards, he is Black. He’s also annoyed that the publishing industry expects him to write books that engage with stereotypical depictions of “Black” suffering—he prefers to write complex reworkings of ancient Greek dramas, which don’t sell all that well, and he’s sick of constantly being told that his writing isn’t “black enough.” He becomes more irate as he follows the praise (and commercial success) of a new book, Juanita Mae Jenkins' We’s Lives In Da Ghetto, which embodies everything Monk detests about the sort of “Black” writing that appeals to publishers and mainstream audiences.

In a moment of acute frustration, Monk pens My Pafology, a parody of the so-called “ghetto fiction” he so detests, writing under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. He submits the novella to his bemused agent, Yul, who reluctantly passes along the manuscript to editors. To Monk’s shock—and horror—the manuscript receives laudatory praise, and he soon receives an offer of $600,000 in advance payments from a major publishing house that wishes to publish My Pafology.

Reluctant to pass on this much-needed cash but unwilling to further discredit his reputation by attaching his name to the work, Monk decides to pretend to be the fictitious Stagg Leigh in his interactions with the publishers, producers, and talk show hosts who are so captivated by My Pafology, playing the part of a gruff ex-con who grew up rough and now wishes to share the real, unfiltered story of Black life in America. In time, Monk’s double life takes a toll on his emotional state, and he suffers a crisis of identity as he considers the ramifications of compromising on his artistic integrity and perpetuating the stereotypes about Black artists and Black life that he finds so offensive.