The Sellout, by Paul Beatty
So here's the deal: if you want to read this book - and you should absolutely read this book - you'll need to get comfortable with reading the N-word multiple times per page. It's jarring at first, you feel kind of dirty reading it, but as you delve further into this insanely smart and funny book, you'll, well, not really get used to it, but come to appreciate why Beatty made the choice to use it so freely. This is satire as its strongest, biting and achingly relevant, and every word matters.
There's so much to unpack in this book, and there's no way I've grokked the entire thing. They could probably teach a college course based around The Sellout, and if they did, Beatty would probably roll his eyes so hard they popped out of his head. Here's what I think the main gist of it is: Our protagonist is considered a sellout within his ghettoized black (mostly) community because of his education and occupation as an urban farmer. Beatty's point, however, is that this community, and black Americans in general, don't really have their own culture because it's all either borrowed from the white people who used to own them or has been co-opted by other races. And how can you be a sellout if there's not really anything to sell out? This is paralleled with the protagonist's quiet battle to put his hometown of Dickens back on the map after its forced unincorporation. The lines that distinguish Dickens from surrounding L.A. county are as blurred as those that separate its black inhabitants from other minorities. And the erasure is intentional. The "other" in this us versus them equation is clear: it's anyone who isn't white.
We enter the scene at the beginning of a case being heard by the Supreme Court: our hero is charged with segregation and slave-holding. But the segregation (not real, by the way, merely implied) was directly responsible for rising test scores in the local school, and the "slave" was a half-crazy old man who was utterly unable to cope without the familiar bonds of racism dictating his actions and who thrust his slavery onto our unwitting hero. What does it mean when a community only pulls together when threatened from without by an incursion of white people? Or when someone who proudly made their living portraying racial stereotypes is told he should be ashamed of the work he did?
Beatty is a supremely gifted satirist, and there's so much more here than I can even begin to touch on. But this is not just one of the smartest books I've read, it's also laugh out loud funny, and supremely nerdy in parts. This is a must-read, and I look forward to reading more of Beatty's work, past and future.
There's so much to unpack in this book, and there's no way I've grokked the entire thing. They could probably teach a college course based around The Sellout, and if they did, Beatty would probably roll his eyes so hard they popped out of his head. Here's what I think the main gist of it is: Our protagonist is considered a sellout within his ghettoized black (mostly) community because of his education and occupation as an urban farmer. Beatty's point, however, is that this community, and black Americans in general, don't really have their own culture because it's all either borrowed from the white people who used to own them or has been co-opted by other races. And how can you be a sellout if there's not really anything to sell out? This is paralleled with the protagonist's quiet battle to put his hometown of Dickens back on the map after its forced unincorporation. The lines that distinguish Dickens from surrounding L.A. county are as blurred as those that separate its black inhabitants from other minorities. And the erasure is intentional. The "other" in this us versus them equation is clear: it's anyone who isn't white.
We enter the scene at the beginning of a case being heard by the Supreme Court: our hero is charged with segregation and slave-holding. But the segregation (not real, by the way, merely implied) was directly responsible for rising test scores in the local school, and the "slave" was a half-crazy old man who was utterly unable to cope without the familiar bonds of racism dictating his actions and who thrust his slavery onto our unwitting hero. What does it mean when a community only pulls together when threatened from without by an incursion of white people? Or when someone who proudly made their living portraying racial stereotypes is told he should be ashamed of the work he did?
Beatty is a supremely gifted satirist, and there's so much more here than I can even begin to touch on. But this is not just one of the smartest books I've read, it's also laugh out loud funny, and supremely nerdy in parts. This is a must-read, and I look forward to reading more of Beatty's work, past and future.
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