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My Pafology: Fo
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Erasure, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Race and Identity
Familial Obligation vs. Personal Needs
Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success
Authenticity
Summary
Analysis
Van Go follows Kesrah to her house, where Kesrah’s uncle is drunk and passed out on the couch. In her room, Kesrah removes her clothing, and Go insults her for being flat chested. Then Go “get[s] on top her.” She cries and says it hurts, but Go knows “she like it.” After, she asks Go if he’ll be back. Go says no—she’s too young for him. Go berates her some more and she starts to cry. Kesrah’s uncle comes into the room. Kesrah tells her uncle that Go raped her, and the man lunges at Go. Go runs from the house.
This is the second time Go has committed sexual assault, and My Pafology isn’t even halfway through. Monk continues to write horrible scenes like this to make fools of readers who empathize with the morally bankrupt protagonists of conventional works of urban fiction.
Themes
Go is heading to the pool hall to tell Yellow and Tito about his encounter when the Jeep guy and his crew pull up alongside him. Go makes a run for it, seeking shelter in an abandoned building. There, he encounters Willy the Wonker. Willy brings up Mama again and makes a crude remark about her body. Go is about to beat him up, but Willy tells him to stop and listen. Willy messed up in life, and he doesn’t want Go to do the same.
Willy the Wonker continues to reenter Go’s story, haunting and antagonizing Go as he simultaneously cautions Go to learn from his (Willy’s) errors and be better. This somewhat reflects Monk’s own conflicted relationship with his late father, who shaped Monk’s identity in profound but not necessarily positive ways. Once more, although Monk writes My Pafology as an over-the-top parody of so-called “ghetto fiction,” his genuinely felt inner conflicts infiltrate the narrative.
Themes
At the pool hall later, when Go starts to brag about having sex with Kesrah, Tito admonishes him. “Fuckin children and havin babies don’t make you no man,” he tells Go. They bicker some more, and Go eventually storms off.
If even Go’s delinquent friends call him out on his immoral behavior, Go must really be a horrible person. Monk closes the chapter on this note to call out publishers and readers who extend empathy to such characters, a move Monk sees as ultimately racist, as it reveals the low standards they have for Black people.
Themes
