With your book sales at an all-time low, your family falling apart, and your agent telling you you're not black enough, what's an author to do? Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison has the answer. Erasure is about a writer dealing with growing old, death, and murder. The novel's plot revolves around the consequences of turning one's art into a commodity, i.e. giving in to market forces. The market force within Erasure mirrors the late-1990s reality of the publishing industry seeming to pigeon hole Black writers by valuing accounts of dysfunctional urban poor over other Black lives. Everett explores race, class, loyalty to family, sex, the theory of language, the life of canonical western artists, abortion, and sexual identity as the novel unfolds.--Wikipedia.com.