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Sellout reviews
Feb. 2nd, 2016 02:16 pmHey,
So last week I finished up The Sellout by Paul Beatty. I believe it was on a best-of-2015 booklist and it looked interesting so I picked it up. It's...well, it's kind of a difficult book to describe. Actually, it's really easy to describe poorly. So bear with me.
The story concerns "Bonbon" Me (we never get his real first name). Me is a young black man living in the former LA suburb of Dickens where he runs a small urban farm. The town of DIckens is a run-down minority community and through the arcane ways of urban planning and gentrification the city is quietly removed from the maps. Me doesn't like the way his hometown has been neglected and erased, but doesn't feel like there's anything he can do about it. Then he mocks up a few highway exit signs for Dickens. Then he paints the borders of the town on the highway. Then...then he re-introduces segregation.
If that sounds kind of outrageous that's the point. The Sellout is a biting piece of satire that goes after complex issues around America and race. It doesn't dumb things down or smooth over any of the complexities and it skewers just about every target it can find.
And I think it's really, really good. I laughed out loud in a number of places, I highlighted a number of passages out of the book, and I feel like I got a lot of really good perspectives on the issue.
Fair warning -- I don't believe it passes the Bechdel Test and the n-word shows up with a perhaps-not-unsurprising frequency. But the writing is solid from top to bottom and I highly recommend it to folks.
later
Tom
So last week I finished up The Sellout by Paul Beatty. I believe it was on a best-of-2015 booklist and it looked interesting so I picked it up. It's...well, it's kind of a difficult book to describe. Actually, it's really easy to describe poorly. So bear with me.
The story concerns "Bonbon" Me (we never get his real first name). Me is a young black man living in the former LA suburb of Dickens where he runs a small urban farm. The town of DIckens is a run-down minority community and through the arcane ways of urban planning and gentrification the city is quietly removed from the maps. Me doesn't like the way his hometown has been neglected and erased, but doesn't feel like there's anything he can do about it. Then he mocks up a few highway exit signs for Dickens. Then he paints the borders of the town on the highway. Then...then he re-introduces segregation.
If that sounds kind of outrageous that's the point. The Sellout is a biting piece of satire that goes after complex issues around America and race. It doesn't dumb things down or smooth over any of the complexities and it skewers just about every target it can find.
And I think it's really, really good. I laughed out loud in a number of places, I highlighted a number of passages out of the book, and I feel like I got a lot of really good perspectives on the issue.
Fair warning -- I don't believe it passes the Bechdel Test and the n-word shows up with a perhaps-not-unsurprising frequency. But the writing is solid from top to bottom and I highly recommend it to folks.
later
Tom
