Fuck That
A Fictional Memoir

A mixed-race man raised in white rural America chronicles his journey through code-switching, corporate tokenism, and the masks worn for survival. From childhood humiliations to workplace politics, this unflinching memoir examines the cost of constantly translating oneself for others’ comfort. In FUCK THAT, Joshua Ericson’s fictionalized memoir-manifesto of mixed-race identity in America, Ericson dissects the exhausting choreography of code-switching, where every interaction demands a different dialect of self. Less a book about finding your voice than about recognizing how thoroughly your voice has been edited, adjusted, and focus-grouped beyond recognition, FUCK THAT documents a lifetime of chameleonic shifts, corporate compliance, and the slow-burning realization that palatability is just another word for negation. The book’s protagonist, Michael, is a mixed-race man raised in white rural America who uses code-switching as a tool of survival, wearing “whiteness like a hand-me-down coat” that “never fit right” but which he tolerated because “different was dangerous.” Michael learns to master the art of being “the good one”—a version of Black masculinity that is palatable, articulate, and non-threatening to white colleagues—at the cost of self-erasure: “I wasn’t lying,” he explains. “I was editing. Every interaction, a new line cut for clarity. Until one day, I couldn’t remember what the original sounded like.” FUCK THAT illustrates the experience of being “too Black for white America and too white for Black America” through mundane cruelties: a gym teacher using his body as an anatomical exhibit to explain Black athleticism; the backhanded compliment of being called “articulate,” a word Michael defines as code for “I didn’t expect this from someone like you.” A Black co-worker, meanwhile, jeers, “You sound like a white boy.” This constant negotiation of identity ultimately leads him to create his podcast as both an escape hatch and a declaration of independence—the one space where he can finally speak without translation. Ericson’s prose alternates between measured analysis and controlled detonation. “I am not your assumption. I am not your checkbox. I am not your story to tell,” he writes, each denial sharp as a paper cut. “Fuck this form. Fuck this job. Fuck this mask.” The writing doesn’t soften the edges or end with hope or healing. Ericson has spent a lifetime making others comfortable; this book is him sending back the bill. Some readers will find the uncompromising anger of FUCK THAT therapeutic. Others will wish Ericson had made his truth more palatable, more balanced. To those readers, he has a simple response: he’s done balancing. Ericson isn’t interested in being a guide, a brand, or “a TED Talk with good posture.” He’s documenting survival in a system that demands constant translation of self. “I wasn’t put here to be palatable,” he declares. And if it makes you uncomfortable? Good—that’s precisely the point. FUCK THAT is a raw, uncompromising work about mixed-race identity in America that refuses to comfort or educate. Joshua Ericson’s controlled fury and precise observations create a necessary testimony about code-switching, survival, and the exhausting performance of acceptability. ~Edward Sung for IndieReader