The premise of The Sellout is set up in the prologue: our narrator, a 20-something black man raised on a farm in the middle of the Los Angeles hood, is on trial before the Supreme Court for slave-owning and segregating the local high school. The rest of the book lays out the story of how this situation came to be, complete with and
Beatty offers up a biting satire with oversized characters (such as the "slave," Hominy Jenkins, a former Little Rascal who's still stuck in the old and jaw-droppingly racist days of Hollywood) and absurd situations to shed light on racial issues. I found myself snorting with laughter many times while reading this book, partly because these characters and plot points are so ridiculous and partly because Beatty's observations are so head-on. While I thought this was an excellent book, the drug use and language mean it's definitely not for everyone.
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