The move to pretend Dickens no longer exists breaks the heart of the narrator's friend Hominy Jenkins, an actor known for taking stereotypical African American roles in his youth – Hominy himself is fictional, but he was once one of TV's real Little Rascals. (In the narrator's case, that's literally true - though he's famous for his citrus, he makes money from selling marijuana and watermelons on horseback.) After the narrator's father, a psychologist, is killed by police officers, he inherits the older man's land - and not too long after, the town of Dickens is removed from the map.

Our hero lives in Dickens, Calif., a city whose original charter mandated it 'remain free of Chinamen, Spanish of all shades, dialects, and hats, Frenchmen, redheads, city slickers, and unskilled Jews.' The town is now mostly African American and Latino, and the site of urban farms, many of which have gone to pot. Paul Beatty has written three other novels: Slumberland, Tuff, and The White Boy Shuffle. But somehow, The Sellout isn't just one of the most hilarious American novels in years, it also might be the first truly great satirical novel of the century.

It's the equivalent to an improv comedy troupe dedicating an entire performance to abortion. Post-racial America or not, it's hard to see how anything funny could come out of slavery, police violence, gangs and racial discrimination, all subjects Beatty tackles in his fourth novel. 'I'm the Scopes monkey,' he reflects, 'the missing link in the evolution of African-American jurisprudence come to life.' His crime, as he explains it to a police officer: 'I've whispered 'Racism' in a post-racial world.' Specifically, he owned a slave and resegregated public transportation and education in his hometown, making the charges a little more complicated. When we're first introduced to him, he's sitting in front of the Supreme Court, openly smoking marijuana and being berated by a furious associate justice. Maybe it was when Barack Obama was elected president, or the first time a white person claimed to be 'colorblind.' It's honestly hard to tell, because as we keep seeing proved again and again, 'post-racial America' is completely indistinguishable from what came before.Įnter the narrator of Paul Beatty's new novel The Sellout. Maybe it was when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, or when Thurgood Marshall was appointed the first African American member of the Supreme Court. It's difficult to pin down the exact day when post-racial America was born. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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