The case takes its own time, and meanwhile, a reporter finally puts Dickens back on the map. This attempt of his at slavery and reinstating segregation lands him in jail, and his case is moved up to the Supreme Court. He starts segregating buses, schools, hospitals in different classes. In this journey of setting things right, he takes help of his dear friend Hominy, the last surviving member of the once popular TV show the “Little Rascals.” He makes Hominy his slave and takes the town back to the days of slavery which is now considered a crime in post-racial America.

He goes to the length of painting a white line around the border of his town. To get back his hometown, the “agrarian ghetto” he brings back slavery and segregation by race into the lives of the people, thinking that it will get his town back on the radar. His hometown Dickens where he is confident that he is going to forever remain and die in is suddenly taken off the maps of the United States Of America. After the death of his dad, he sets on to do farming on the land ahead of his house – marijuana and fruits being his main produce. The Sellout also referred to as Bonbon in the book has been homeschooled and experimented upon by his dad for psychological findings. Kindled by his isolated upbringing, racism and his general distaste of the hypocritical surroundings of the town, the narrator sets out on a journey of making the wrong things right. The novel won the Man Booker Prize 2016 and the National Book Critics Award 2016. The story of the narrator, a black African-American, is set in and around Los Angeles, California in the town of Dickens. Its one of those books that have this rare combination of satire and comedy submerged in its pages.

The Sellout is a 2015 published novel by Paul Beatty. “Silence can either be protest or consent, but most times it’s fear.”

The sellout review