Dear Wags,

Last night, I finally saw American Fiction, which the Wag-in-Chief told me would grab several Oscar nominations. Indeed it did, scoring five Academy nods this morning, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Sublime Jeffrey Wright.

In case you missed it: Oppenheimer led the Oscar field with 13 nominations, Barbie followed with eight, and Anatomy of a Fall, The Holdovers, and Zone of Interest, are in Fiction’s good company with five laurels apiece. I’ll leave predictions to the Awards Squad. Still, how can I not put in a word about Cord Jefferson’s canny adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure?

The book and the film don’t line up precisely. A few themes are softened to make the story more palatable to a broad movie-going audience and the location is shifted from Washington D.C. to Boston. Movie critics have had a lot to say about this picture, but one moment really hit me: When Monk (Wright) introduces his new girlfriend Coraline (Erika Alexander) to his family, his mother (Leslie Uggams) tells her, “I’m glad you’re not white.” Coraline responds, “I am, too.”

It’s a great line, and the audience erupted in laughter. Still, I can’t help thinking how the sentiment lands differently depending on the speaker. A couple of weeks ago, an older relative said of our daughter’s fiancé (who happens to be white), “you should be glad she’s not marrying a Black man.” It wasn’t amusing.

I was furious, and excused myself while my spouse explained that interracial couples no longer face the hurdles they once did. Public approval of interracial marriage has gone from 5 percent of Americans in 1950 to 94 percent today, according to Gallup. Around 20 percent of marriages in this country cross racial lines. That’s a sea change.

The character of Agnes Ellison may come from the same generation as my family member, but they are informed by different experiences. For all sorts of reasons, many African Americans still have complicated feelings about interracial marriage. One of the many gifts of Everett’s novel was to air just how differently people who share the same country see the world. It can lead to comic misunderstanding and tragedy.

As a book critic, I can tell you that American Fiction’s depiction of the publishing world is pretty spot on. Except for Monk’s agent, these literary types are all white, and clueless about the world outside a few blocks of New York City. Old prejudices die hard, but that eternal parochialism serves nobody.

Yours Ever,

BKP

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Cyrus, an Iranian American from Indiana, is adrift after the loss of his father. The 30-year-old recovering addict is also fixated on his mother’s death. When he was still an infant, her flight was mistakenly shot down by a U.S. missile. Inspired by Persian literary tradition, he commits himself to writing an epic martyrdom poem in her honor. When he’s finished, Cyrus may commit suicide, but along the way he discovers Orkideh, a terminally ill artist who turns the end of her life into an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus coaxes his lover Zee to take in this strange show, and the result is a wise, funny reflection on love, grief, and identity.

Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke

Cooke’s debut novel follows Akúa, a Jamaican woman living in Vancouver. When her 12-year-old brother dies of the sickle cell anemia, the same disease that killed their mother, she returns to Kingston to scatter his ashes. That trip reunites Akúa with her estranged sister Tamika, who wield strict Christianity like a machete. But things get complicated when Tamika finds herself attracted to another woman. Even people who are broughtupsy—or "raised right” in Jamaican patois, struggle to come to terms with who they really are. Cooke says that she never found a book that dealt with these topics simultaneously: Being a woman in Jamaica, being gay in Jamaica, and being a Jamaican living abroad. She’s written a beautiful novel about all three.