The Sellout

About “The Sellout”

The Sellout by Paul Beatty is a satirical novel about a young man raised in the impoverished community of Dickens, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The narrator, raised by a single father who was a controversial sociologist, grows up as the subject of racial psychological studies. He believes his father's work will lead to a memoir that will improve their financial situation, but after his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he discovers there was no memoir. The town of Dickens has been erased from the map, and the narrator, feeling wronged, takes extreme action by reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. His actions lead to a trial that brings him to the Supreme Court.