Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a Black intellectual novelist, writes a parody of ghetto fiction out of frustration. The parody becomes a bestseller. Everett published Erasure in 2001 to modest sales; the 2023 film adaptation (American Fiction) brought it the audience it deserved. A satire of the publishing industry's appetite for "authentic" Black suffering, and one of the funniest novels about race in America.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.