The Sellout by Paul Beatty review – a whirlwind satire about racial identity

Every anxiety about race in the US is laid bare in a surreal fable about a black neighbourhood being wiped off the map

If there is one thing we know about words you shouldn’t say, it’s that those words end up becoming very alluring. The Sellout is a fast-paced, verbose book, but one particular word crops up again and again. Paul Beatty’s version is the slave master spelling of nigger, not the 90s hip-hop “nigga”. Although the “er” is a harsh and oppressive end to a harsh and oppressive word, his repetitive use comes off with a friendly familiarity. It’s far from menacing or mocking. You might even close the book feeling desensitised to one of the most contentious words in the English language.

Maybe that’s the point of this whirlwind of a satire. Everything about The Sellout’s plot is contradictory. The devices are real enough to be believable, yet surreal enough to raise your eyebrows. Our protagonist is never fully named, but we are told that his surname is Me. This is convenient, because the novel is written entirely in the first person. Me is a black man who owns a farm in a poor black urban neighbourhood. Farmland in the middle of a poor city is an odd setting, but it’s real enough: you’ll find Richland Farms in the heart of rap-famous Compton, Los Angeles. Me surfs for fun, and smokes weed in the supreme court, where he ends up facing retribution for breaking some of the country’s most hallowed laws about race.

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