Valet Reader

After reading 3 pages I had an inkling I was going to enjoy this book. After reading 5 pages describing a birth and the formation of the MISCS or Mothers In Support of Caesarian Sections campaign (with a slogan/image of a circle with a vagina in it with a line through it) I had more than a feeling that this book and I were meant to be. And by the time I reached the 11th page whereby Not Sidney (the main character) questions his teachers use of the comma I knew this book and I were going to probably get married. Then again, in this day and age, with all those conservative, god fearing, man – woman marriage people would probably throw a shit fit so maybe not.

This book is funny. Funny in a “you’re going to laugh out loud” kind of way. The simplest miscommunications in this book are truly divine and will make you snicker.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier is about a boy named Not Sidney and his transformation from adolescent to grown man in the antebellum south. Of course with a name like Not Sidney introductions with people are forever going to be a harder task than they ever should be. Imagine yourself saying “whats your name?” and getting the response “I am Not Sidney.” Well, you can kind of imagine that it ends up playing out similar to Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First. That alone of course would cause some confusion but add to that the fact that Not Sidney Poitier actually looks like the real Sidney Poitier and the confusion is compounded.

While hilarious in a stand-up comedic way Everett’s book is also a story of race and cultural discrepancies during the time in which the book takes place. While I may have been looking at this a little too deeply, I feel that Everett’s separation of chapters each had their own respective race and cultural challenges embedded in them. While I won’t go into too much depth, there is the first chapter at Ted Turner’s house in Atlanta where wealth and servility is introduced, the second chapter where Not Sidney finds himself in Peckerwood County, jail and a work camp where racism and bigotry are rampant, the third chapter in college, and so on and so forth. Whether or not it was deliberate I don’t know, but I liked it.

Coupled with the descriptive nature of Everett’s prose and the voice he gives to his characters this book is an entertaining story. I mean who could come up with this sentence when describing a redneck county: “It was terrestrial black hole, rather white hole, a kind of Caucasian anus that only sucked, yet smelled like a fart.” For an author who I had never heard of, from a book that no one in my family even knew existed, I am extremely glad to have read this book and let other people know that it is certainly worth picking up.

What’s remarkable to me is that Percival Everett has actually written something like 20 other books. Doing a little more research I found out that he has written on a whole gamut of topics from war and sports to racism and politics and in each story inserting himself as a character. Some would call that narcissistic but I call it rad.