Can Black Literature Escape the Representation Trap?

But the market’s recent call for more representation has produced troubling new tropes. In various forms, successful novels will center the encounter between a Black protagonist and a white social environment. In “Such a Fun Age” and “Luster,” a protagonist enters into white domestic space, unsettling the privileged lives of their white female counterparts. In “Luster,” Edie’s recognition that Akila is being bullied by a tutor shocks the unaware Rebecca, who is confronted with the limits of her perception as a white woman. In “Such a Fun Age,” Alix, the comfortably middle-class . . .