The sellout : a novel
Beatty, Paul
The sellout : a novel / Paul Beatty. - First edition. - New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2015 - 288 p. ; 22 cm
Raised in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens - improbably smack in the middle of downtown L.A. - the narrator of The Sellout resigned himself to the fate of all other middle-class Californians: "to die in the same bedroom you'd grown up in, looking up at the crack in the stucco ceiling that had been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist at Riverside Community College, he spent his childhood as the subject in psychological studies, classic experiments revised to include a racially-charged twist. He also grew up believing this pioneering work might result in a memoir that would solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a shoot out with the police, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral and some maudlin what-ifs. Fuelled by this injustice and the general disrepair of his down-trodden hometown, he sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins, our narrator initiates a course of action - one that includes reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school - destined to bring national attention. These outrageous events land him with a law suit heard by the Supreme Court, the latest in a series of cases revolving around the thorny issue of race in America. It challenges the most sacred tenets of the U.S. Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality--the black Chinese.
English.
9780374260507
Fathers and sons----Fiction
Race relations---Fiction
Satire
PS3552.E19 / S45 2015
FIC BEA
The sellout : a novel / Paul Beatty. - First edition. - New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux , 2015 - 288 p. ; 22 cm
Raised in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens - improbably smack in the middle of downtown L.A. - the narrator of The Sellout resigned himself to the fate of all other middle-class Californians: "to die in the same bedroom you'd grown up in, looking up at the crack in the stucco ceiling that had been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist at Riverside Community College, he spent his childhood as the subject in psychological studies, classic experiments revised to include a racially-charged twist. He also grew up believing this pioneering work might result in a memoir that would solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a shoot out with the police, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral and some maudlin what-ifs. Fuelled by this injustice and the general disrepair of his down-trodden hometown, he sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins, our narrator initiates a course of action - one that includes reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school - destined to bring national attention. These outrageous events land him with a law suit heard by the Supreme Court, the latest in a series of cases revolving around the thorny issue of race in America. It challenges the most sacred tenets of the U.S. Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality--the black Chinese.
English.
9780374260507
Fathers and sons----Fiction
Race relations---Fiction
Satire
PS3552.E19 / S45 2015
FIC BEA
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