The Sellout

“Problem is, they both disappeared from my life, first my dad, and then my hometown, and suddenly I had no idea who I was, and no clue how to become myself.”

As with Hominy, the loss of Dickens compels Me to question his identity. Me also cites his dad’s death as reason for his identity issues, which links to the theme of Fathers and Sons. Though often antagonistic, his dad helped give him a sense of self.

“But where my father saw an opportunity for information exchange, public advocacy, and communal counsel, Foy saw a midlife springboard to fame.”

The quote juxtaposes the different views on the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals. F. K. sees it as a way to encourage truth and activism, while Foy wants to exploit it for personal visibility. The alliteration in the phrase “communal counsel” signals F. K.’s genuine if somewhat pious belief in the moral value of the group.

“When you grow up on a farm in the middle of the ghetto, you come to see that what your father always told you during morning chores was true: People eat the shit you shovel them.”

The quote features irony: The unexpected appearance of a farm in the middle of a city. It also introduces the phrase “people eat the shit you shovel them”—the name of Part 1. Paul Beatty repeats the phrase four times in Part 1, emphasizing its importance and suggesting it’s time to give people something else to eat.

“I met interesting people and tried to convince them that no matter how much heroin and R. Kelly they had in their systems, they absolutely could not fly.”

To make the quote funny, Beatty uses juxtaposition and a pop culture reference. He ties the dangerous drug heroin to the rhythm and blues singer R. Kelly, alluding to one of Kelly’s hit songs, “I Believe I Can Fly“ (1996).

“His film career was a compendium of unseen outtakes where he’s doused with all things white: sunny-side-up eggs, paint, and pancake flour avalanches.”

The quote uses hyperbolic language—words like “doused” and “avalanches”—to highlight Hominy’s minor and degrading movie parts. The quote also foreshadows the events of Whitey Week, where the kids choose to douse themselves in a white liquid.

“Cut my penis off and stuff it into my mouth.”

Having tried to lynch himself, Hominy turns to Me for help. As he does throughout the book, Hominy attempts to live out the most brutal forms of racism through performance. As is fitting of a satire, the line between performance and reality is often hard to identify. Hominy really does attempt suicide, and it’s not clear what he would have done if Me had gone along with his request.

“‘Problematic,’ someone muttered, invoking the code word [B]lack thinkers use to characterize anything or anybody that makes them feel uncomfortable, impotent, and painfully aware that they don’t have the answers to questions and assholes like me.”

Beatty confronts contemporary discourse via Me’s digression on the often used word “problematic,” characterizing it as a way for academics and intellectuals to dismiss questions they don’t want or are unable to answer.

“[N]ext to Kafka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Eisenstein, and Tolstoy your favorite thing is to drive. Is to keep moving, to guide your bus and your life gently and slowly into the terminus and take a well-deserved respite.”

The quote reveals Marpessa’s diverse influences: Franz Kafka, the 20th-century Black poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the 20th-century physicist Albert Einstein, and the 19th-century Russian author Leo Tolstoy. The quote also turns Marpessa’s bus into a symbol for a person’s journey in life.

“No, because you’re a beautiful woman who just happens to be [B]lack, and you’re far too smart not to know that it isn’t race that’s the problem but class.”

The discussion between Laura Jane and Marpessa alludes to contemporary discussions by thinkers like Adolph Reed, who highlight socioeconomic status—”class”—over race. Beatty parodies the class argument, as Marpessa dismisses Laura Jane’s opinion.

“But not to worry, Lost City of White Male Privilege, real or imagined, me and Hominy had your backs and were proud to make you a sister city of Dickens, aka the Last Bastion of Blackness.”

Beatty makes fun of a familiar target—entitled white men—and then adds irony or a twist. Dickens proudly links itself with the “Lost City of White Male Privilege.” In Beatty’s world, “Blackness” and “White Male Privilege” are allies.

“You know what’s not gay…being gay.”

After the Chaff Middle School kids call a variety of things “gay,” the exasperated adults ask what they wouldn’t consider “gay,” and the boy’s answer represents irony. In a twist, “being gay,” isn’t “gay.” It’s as if the pejorative has nothing to do with real gay people.

“One day I foolishly said to my father that there was no racism in America. Only equal opportunity that [B]lack people kick aside because we don’t want to take responsibility for ourselves.”

Me recalls a moment from his youth when he attempted to rebel against his father by parroting what was then a common conservative talking point about racial inequality. F. K. responds by taking his son on a field trip to Mississippi in search of a specific form of Jim Crow-era racism he is unable to find.

“I’m bisexual. I likes both.”

Spoken by one of the Mississippi white men F. K. expects to menace him and Me. The dialectical “likes” rather than “like” aligns the man with the redneck stereotype F. K. is looking for, but his open identification as bisexual upends those expectations, showing how much has outwardly changed even in the deep South.

“I learned that I’ve been white for only ten minutes and I hate you n****** already.”

Hominy’s joke (Me thinks it might be a joke) spotlights Beatty’s no-holds-barred approach toward humor. It also links to the tension between Racial and Personal Identity, as the abused boy’s personal experiences with his family push him to make a general statement about race.

“Did you know some racist asshole put a sign on a public bus.”

Foy’s statement advances the ironic symbolism of racism. Me’s work doesn’t make him a “racist asshole,” but a community leader. If anyone’s a “racist asshole”—or just an “asshole”—it’s Foy.

“In the history of American [B]lack people, there have been only two with the complete inability to tell a joke: Martin Luther King, Jr., and my father.”

The quote features hyperbolic diction—the exaggerated statement that there were only two unfunny Black people in history. It also contains juxtaposition: It pairs Me’s questionable dad with the iconic 20th-century civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“Cast down your buckets where you are.”

Beatty includes a quote from the late 18th-century/early 19th-century Black leader Booker T. Washington, who wanted Black people to focus on improving their own spaces instead of achieving equality with white people. Rather than forsake Dickens, Me brings it back and helps its residents stay there and flourish—”cast down [their] buckets.”

“Unable to contain his excitement, Foy’s voice rose two octaves and took on a Hitlerian fervor.”

Foy promotes his new book, Tom Soarer, and Me compares him to the 20th-century Nazi leader—a symbol of unequaled evil—Adolf Hitler. The hyperbolic comparison reveals Foy’s manic preoccupation with his brand and foreshadows his wild behavior during the Dickens Five scene.

“Weary and stuffed from being force-fed the falsehood that when one of your kind makes it, it means that you’ve all made it.”

The middle school children don’t want to hear more about how the success of one Black person symbolizes success for all Black people. In Me’s view, this “falsehood” is an unhelpful conflation of Racial and Personal Identity—asking the students to believe that they share in the success of the most successful Black figures as a way to distract them from the unequal conditions in which they live.

“A book of essays called Me Talk White One Day.”

Foy is poor and living out of his car, but he’s working on another book. The title alludes to David Sedaris’s collection of essays Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000). Once again, Beatty uses pop culture references to create humor.

“‘I seen it a million times,’ my father used to say. ‘Professional n****** that just snap because the charade is over.’”

Foy’s behavior makes Me think of his dad, who, for all his faults, was well aware of Capitalism’s Power to Co-opt Activism. Foy wasn’t searching for truth but perpetuating a “charade.” The term, “professional n******” alludes to Amiri Baraka’s concept of “official Negroes” and Cornell West’s idea of “Black faces in high places”—Black people whose elevation to positions of power serves to mask racial injustice rather than to rectify it.

“[T]he Supreme Court is where the country takes out its dick and tits and decides who’s going to get fucked and who’s getting a taste of mother’s milk.”

Beatty uses graphic language to create an image of the Supreme Court dispensing not justice but kindness and punishment according to arbitrary and sometimes racist whim. The pornographic nature of the imagery he uses here serves to puncture the veil of respectability that surrounds this institution.

“Unmitigated Blackness is simply not giving a fuck. Clarence Cooper, Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, Maya Deren, Sun Ra, Mizoguchi, Frida Kahlo, [B]lack-and-white Godard, Céline, Gong Li, David Hammons, Björk, and the Wu-Tang Clan in any of their hooded permutations.”

Me’s list of “Unmitigated Blackness” is ironic in that it features people who don’t have Black skin. Like comedian Lenny Bruce with his famous list of Jewish and Goyish people and things, Me defines Blackness not as a race but as an ineffable quality that loosely translates to “simply not giving a fuck” (277).