Trey Ellis facts for kids

Trey Ellis (born in 1962) is an American writer, screenwriter, professor, and playwright. He was born in Washington D.C. He went to Hopkins School and Phillips Academy, Andover before attending Stanford University. At Stanford, he was the editor of the Stanford Chaparral and wrote his first novel, Platitudes. Today, he is a professor at Columbia University in the Graduate School of the Arts.

Books and Stories by Trey Ellis

Trey Ellis has written several books, including novels and a memoir about his life.

His First Novel: Platitudes

Ellis's first novel, Platitudes, came out in 1988. It tells the story of Earle, a black high school student in New York City. Earle is a "cultural mulatto," a term Ellis uses to describe someone who is black but also fits well into white culture. Earle is a bit of a "nerd" who feels out of place in Harlem. The book also features Dorothy, another black student who lives in Harlem but easily moves between her mostly white friends and her home life.

The novel uses different writing styles to show how different people think about what it means to be black. It also humorously challenges older ideas about black art and identity. Earle, as a black "nerd," shows that black masculinity can be diverse and different from typical ideas. This helps explain what Ellis calls "The New Black Aesthetic."

Other Books by Trey Ellis

Ellis also wrote the novels Home Repairs (1993) and Right Here, Right Now (1999). Right Here, Right Now won an American Book Award. His most recent book is Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood (2008). This book is a memoir, which means it's a true story about his own life as a single dad raising two children.

Trey Ellis in Film

Trey Ellis has also written for movies and TV. His work includes:

• The Tuskegee Airmen: This film won a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award.
• Good Fences: This movie starred famous actors Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg. It was considered for a PEN award for best TV script and was nominated for a Black Reel award.
• The Inkwell: He co-wrote this film in 1994 under the name Tom Ricostronza.

Essays and Articles

Ellis's essays, which are short pieces of writing about a specific topic, have been published in major newspapers like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. He has also written for magazines like GQ. He used to write regularly on The Huffington Post website.

Plays for the Stage

Trey Ellis has written several plays for the theater, including:

• Fly
• Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing
• Holy Mackerel

About the Play Holy Mackerel

Holy Mackerel is a play about The Amos 'n' Andy Show. This show was very popular on radio from the 1920s to the 1950s, and then it became a TV show. On radio, white actors voiced the characters. When it moved to TV, black actors were hired. The show was both loved and criticized. Some people thought it showed black characters in a bad way, while others felt it was important because it showed black families and professionals at a time when few other shows did.

The show was eventually canceled after a boycott led by Walter Francis White, who was in charge of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Ellis explained that he wanted to tell the story of Amos 'n' Andy because he learned that the all-black cast were very talented comedians, and he felt their story needed to be brought back to life.

The New Black Aesthetic

Ellis is also well-known for an essay he wrote called "New Black Aesthetic" (NBA). In this essay, he talks about how the idea of "blackness" has changed in American society. He argues that there's a wider way to describe middle-class black people today, and this new way of thinking has led to a new artistic movement.

Ellis believes the NBA means black Americans have more choices in how they express themselves through art and culture, beyond just traditional ideas like "Africa and jazz." For example, he points out that black students now feel more free to study art in college, rather than always feeling pressured to become doctors or lawyers. He also interviewed people like filmmaker Spike Lee and the band Fishbone, seeing them as examples of "thriving hybrids" who succeed without leaving their culture behind.

Cultural Mulatto: A New Idea

In his "New Black Aesthetic" essay, Ellis created the term "cultural mulatto." This term describes a black person who can do well and feel comfortable in white society, while still keeping all parts of their complex black cultural identity.

Ellis talks about two types of cultural mulattoes:

• "Thriving hybrids": These individuals go beyond stereotypes. They understand how society sees them because of their race, but they don't let it stop them from growing and being themselves. Ellis says, "Just as a genetic mulatto is a black person of mixed parents who can often get along fine with his white grandparents, a cultural mulatto, educated by a multi-racial mix of cultures, can also navigate easily in the white world."
• "Neutered mutants": These are cultural mulattoes who try too hard to please both white and black worlds and end up not truly fitting into either.

Ellis uses the term "mulatto," which can sometimes be seen as offensive, to challenge older ideas. In the past, there was a stereotype called the "tragic mulatto" – someone who struggled to fit into white culture and felt lost from black culture. Ellis argues that in modern society, cultural mulattoes don't have to be "tragic." They can define their own identity without pretending not to be black, and without feeling they need to act "superblack" to prove themselves.

Cultural mulattoes, supported by the ideas of the NBA, show that there's room for many different black identities. They use their education and understanding of different cultures to create "atypically black" art and earn respect based on who they are, not just on old racial categories.

Modern Examples of the New Black Aesthetic

The ideas of the New Black Aesthetic are still very much alive today. You can see examples in popular culture:

• TV Shows: Shows like Donald Glover's Atlanta and Issa Rae's Insecure show characters who are "cultural mulattoes." The characters Issa and Earn can move between white and black spaces. For example, in Atlanta, Earn and his girlfriend go to a "Juneteenth" party mostly attended by white people, and they play along with the guests' expectations in a funny way.
• Music: Artists like Janelle Monae also show the New Black Aesthetic. In her album Dirty Computer, Monae expresses her identity as a queer black woman. She doesn't just try to please a specific black or white audience. Instead, she connects with anyone who can relate to her experiences. Her music empowers black queer women, whose voices have often been ignored. Monae's style and refusal to conform make her a "thriving hybrid" and a trendsetter.

About the Novel Platitudes

Platitudes is a 1988 novel that uses metafiction, which means it's a "story within a story." It shows two fictional African-American writers, Dewayne and Isshee, who are trying to define "blackness" through their characters, Earle and Dorothy. The novel gives examples of what Ellis calls the New Black Aesthetic.

What Happens in Platitudes

The story starts with Dewayne Wellington, an experimental black writer, trying to write his novel. He creates Earle, a chubby teenage New Yorker, who is different from typical stereotypes of young black males. Earle is a "cultural mulatto" – a 16-year-old black boy who lives and goes to school in wealthy, mostly white areas of Manhattan. He's also a "nerd" who loves computer programming, which is often seen as a "white" interest. Earle tries to connect with his black roots when he visits a diner in Harlem.

There, he meets Dorothy, a smart and attractive girl who goes to a private school in Manhattan but lives in Harlem. She's also a "cultural mulatto" because she can easily fit in with her white friends while still knowing who she is as a black person.

Dewayne asks for advice on his novel and meets Isshee Ayam, an African American feminist writer. She criticizes his work and tries to "correct" it by writing her own versions of the story, adding more feminist ideas. She changes the setting to rural Georgia and alters the characters. As the story goes on, Dewayne and Isshee start to compromise, and their writing styles and beliefs begin to mix.

By showing how Dewayne and Isshee's stories combine, Ellis suggests that there isn't just one way to define black identity. Instead, "blackness" is unique for each person based on their experiences and interactions with culture. The relationship between Dewayne and Isshee also mirrors what happens in Earle and Dorothy's story. Ellis uses these two authors and their characters to show the "new black aesthetic" and the idea that there isn't a single "black identity."

How Platitudes is Structured

Platitudes has a unique structure, like many postmodern novels. Ellis changes the style often, moving between dialogue, thoughts, and a narrator's point of view. The novel is also written in an epistolary format, meaning it's made up of different documents like letters, menus, exams, and songs. This mix of documents creates a rich and varied reading experience.

Main Ideas in Platitudes

One of the main ideas in Platitudes is the question of how to show "blackness" in writing. This is explored through the arguments between Dewayne and Isshee. Dewayne's style is more modern and shows unusual forms of blackness, while Isshee's style is more traditional. For example, they have different ideas about how to portray Earle's mother. Ellis suggests that the best way to tell the "honest black experience" is by combining these different approaches. When Dewayne and Isshee work together and accept their differences, they can finish their story. The novel explores many common and unexpected stereotypes in black literature.

More About Trey Ellis

In 1991, Trey Ellis was featured in a half-hour TV documentary called A Moveable Feast, which was shown across the country on PBS.