I Am Not Sidney Poitier

by Percival Everett

[nannah]

I have to be honest here; I had absolutely no idea what I was expecting when I checked this out at the library (it was on my reading challenge). This made me completely unprepared for this strange and kind of surreal novel.

Content warnings:
Pedophilia
Rape & sexual harrassment
Police corruption & brutality
Racism/anti black racism
Colorism
Some ableism in the beginning

Representation:
Main protagonist is black, as are a lot of the main characters

Not Sidney Poitier (yes, the Not is part of his name) has been orphaned at age eleven, leaving him with an immense amount of money and in the care of Ted Turner, an also incredibly rich foster father. Not Sidney tries to survive in this messed up country with his strange name, his very eerie resemblance to the actor Sidney Poitier, and his fortune (as a very dark black man in Georgia).

This book feels extremely episodic, with adventures separated by either Not Sidney getting a new car or meeting with his financial advisor (... and then Not Sidney gets arrested and encounters the poor family in the woods; and then Not Sidney has a strange “Get Out”-like experience with a light-skinned black family with a sad case of self-loathing; and then Not Sidney … etc.). It contributes to both the supposedly humorous and the strange affect this book has.

I’m not sure I can give this book a good review, because honestly, it disturbed me much more than it made me laugh (the summary and genres list this as humor). I believe the elements that were supposed to be humorous made me a little sick. Like when Not Sidney was raped by his Much Older teacher (aka pedophilia), his guardian Ted Turner was like “But did you enjoy it?” “Wait, was she pretty? Just trying to get a picture of the situation.”.

Don’t get me wrong, it was really hard to put down, and I nearly read it all through the night when it veered into the Get Out-like territory (and I had to google if Get Out used this as inspiration … but I found nothing, sadly). And the second half was so much better than the first, with much more likable and humorous characters. The ending, too! Talk about surreal. It also made me literally gape and shout, “WHAT?” to my pets.

But a lot of the book made me cringe (and sometimes cry; there were a LOT of traumatic things here! I know that’s sometimes the point, though), and I don’t know if I’d read it again. Again, I’m not very good at reviewing books that are so … literary and, well, intelligent. So I guess I’m going by how much I enjoyed and liked it in the end. I’m one hundred percent sure there are other reviews by smarter people who can pick this book apart and be a better judge.