Sunday 19 June 2022

“I am Not Sidney Poitier“ by Percival Everett - review


 “I Am Not Sidney Poitier” by Percival Everett:

Again, a great novel from Percival Everett, as irresistible and hard to put down as The Trees and Wounded.

In I Am Not Sidney Poitier young Not Sidney Poitier sets out on a quest in search for his identity and authenticity in the absurd country of the United States of America. He is surrounded and obstructed by a culture where other people’s perceptions of race, wealth, and so many other issues do not make this an easy task. As he stumbles from one misadventure into the next mishap young Not Sidney slowly gets to know more about himself.


How does a name define a person? Not Sidney Poitier is forced to ask himself this question constantly. The name was given to him by an eccentric mother and the origin and cause of the name stays obscure. He certainly has a great resemblance to the real actor Sidney Poitier but is not him, he is Not Sidney. 


And with this unusual name there are bound to be confusions at every new encounter. Everett never gets tired to vary these inevitable confusing difficult introductions to every new person and delivers them every time slightly altered. It becomes a running gag and a never ending source of word play. But it also raises the question every time anew who Not Sidney really is.


As the classical young American innocent, young Not Sidney goes to school, is bullied, is sexually abused by a white woman teacher, has to leave school because of the incident, goes to college, joins a fraternity, drops out, gets arrested by racist law enforcement in racist southern states for driving alone and being just what he his, a black young man. Not Sidney is smart enough to know what is really going on but also kind enough not to turn away from terminally stupid people the moment he encounters them.


Not Sidney has one great advantage, he has come into the inheritance of a lot of money, he really is very, very rich. That is sometimes helpful, but mostly he tries to conceal the fact and prefers to leave others in the dark about it.


Not Sidney at college finds a girlfriend, is invited to Thanksgiving to her parent’s home only there to learn that he is too dark for their lightly skinned daughter and the family. The mother is a climber, the father a prosperous attorney and they feel they have strived and worked too hard to be set back on their imaginary course to whiteness. But then they find out that he has money and all their bigotry and hypocrisy comes to the fore: They suck up to him. He disdainfully refuses. He has learned more at this Thanksgiving weekend than in all the weeks of "The Philosophy of Nonsense“, a class given by his professor in college, a certain Percival Everett, whom Not Sidney sort of adopts as a father figure but the character Percival Everett plays hard to get. As in real life the writer Percival Everett seems to refuse easy categorization of his work as that of a Black author.


Many many events lead to the end of the book, not all questions are answered, but a lot has been gained on the journey. This is another delightful mix of fury at the world and the hilarity and absurdity which we call life or, in a more localized definition, the funhouse America. This is a brilliant, provocative and very funny book and a greatly entertaining satire.



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