Your name is your identity, it’s who you are. Names are important, and everybody has at least one. Actually, most people have at least three names, you get a first, middle, and a last name; heck, some people get two last names. My brother is special though, he only has two names; I mean, what kind of person doesn’t have a middle name? Anyway, Percival Everett seems to think names are important too. In his book, re: f(gesture), he brings up the importance of names twice. In the poem F, he writes “F is for Frankenstein, who did not name his baby. Always name offspring”. In the poem N¸ he repeats the line, “Always name offspring”. It appears that Everett finds names important. So, when Everett published a novel in 2009 and decided to name his character Not Sidney Poitier, there is a level of importance to it.
Throughout Everett’s novel I am Not Sidney Poitier, Not Sidney is repeatedly asked about his name. Whenever he tells somebody that his name is Not Sidney, they obviously become confused, as would you if someone said their name but put “not” before it. Because of his strange name, he was sometimes bullied in school. Not Sidney decides to drop out of high school because he’s rich and he can, and he then thinks he’s ready to just drive somewhere and start a new life. He says, “I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier”. This is the point in his life where he decides that he wants his name to mean something. He then leaves home and is immediately arrested for being black. When he gets arrested, he is chained to another inmate who seems aggressive and rude. When Not Sidney is asked what his name is, he simply replies “Poitier”, because this will minimalize confusion, and maybe this time he won’t get punched. Upon his return from jail, he enrolls in college. He thinks that with a degree, he really can make his name mean something. He goes to see one of his professors, who Everett named Percival Everett, and Everett tells him “…you’re Not Sidney Poitier and also not Sidney Poitier, but in a strange way you are Sidney Poitier as much as you’re anyone”. As confusing as this may seem around the halfway point of the book, it makes sense in the end. In the final pages of the novel, he shows up at LAX airport, and there are men holding signs that read “Sidney Poitier”, so he goes with them. He is put in a private car and ends up at a film festival where he assumes the place of Sidney Poitier and receives an award. So, Not Sidney Poitier lived his whole life being compared or mistaken for Sidney Poitier to the point that he becomes Sidney Poitier in a way.
It is strange to think of yourself as someone you’re not. For example, I go by two names. My actual name is Anthony, and whenever I meet somebody, I introduce myself as Anthony. When I get to know somebody enough, they begin to call me by a nickname that my family gave me when I was an infant, Nino. So, throughout my whole life, up until high school I went by Anthony in school, and Nino at home. When I got to high school, my entire personality changed completely. I basically became a whole different person. Around the same time, my friends began calling me Nino too. Now my high school is small, so everybody knows each other. This means that now everybody knows I go by Nino. I was being called Nino in school and at home, and the only people who called me Anthony were teachers, meaning in a way I became Nino. However, this changed again when I went to college. Everybody started calling me Anthony again, so I started introducing myself as Anthony again. Whenever I got close friends though, they would start calling me Nino. This apparently created a problem in my mind that I didn’t realize was there until I solved the problem earlier this semester, a whole year later. When I meet people, and I assume everybody can relate to this, I don’t show them my full self. I become very reserved and don’t let them see who I am until I begin to see who they are. So, I introduce myself as Anthony and they meet only a part of me. After hanging put with that person maybe two or three times, I start to relax around them. Usually, that’s the same time that they would start calling me Nino. So, Anthony was a partial version of me, whereas Nino was all of me. At some point in this semester, I realized that by going by two names, I began to break apart my personality from one person into two. So, at the end of I am Not Sidney Poitier, when he says “I have learned that my name is not my name. It seems that you all know me and nothing could be further from the truth…I AM NOT MYSELF TODAY”, I understand what he means. It doesn’t matter what your name is, or what you go by, who you are is internal. Your name is not your identity. Your name is not who you are.