The Sellout

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published July 10, 2015 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-26050-7
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4 stars (1 review)

A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout showcases a comic genius at the top of his game. It challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant.

Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will …

9 editions

Review of 'The Sellout' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Have you ever read a book and thought the whole time, "I am way too white to be able to review this book" while laughing out loud at the story?In a forgotten agriculturally zoned area of Los Angeles, Mr. Me as gotten himself a slave.  He doesn't want one but Hominy Jenkins grew up as a child actor playing the most racist roles imaginable and thinks that being a slave won't that much of a change.  Me isn't sure about this since Hominy is only willing to work a few hours a day and is fairly useless at best.  He's also wracking up bills at the local S M dungeon because Hominy insists on being beaten and Me won't do it himself.  The beatings have to happen though because anytime Hominy decides he isn't being treated badly enough he stands on a box in the front yard and tries to …