California Book Club: The Sellout

Hi, it’s Vanessa, your ENLIGHTENMENT host

Here’s the second pick for my bimonthly book club of fiction/non-fiction focused on the Golden State.

Along with the book, I am going to invite a special guest to each club meeting, someone who is an expert or very connected to the theme of the book and can answer our questions about the topic. So even if you haven’t finished / opened the book, you can still ask questions and be part of the conversation.

The pick for April is Paul Beatty’s, “The Sellout.” Written in 2016, it won Beatty the Man Booker Prize, making him the first American to win that prestigious UK literary award. Judges called the book, which is set in the fictional Los Angeles neighborhood of Dickens, a laugh-out-loud caustic satire on US racial politics that puts him up there with Mark Twain.

Besides the book group discussion, I’m inviting a couple of guests who can tell us about the history of Black neighborhoods in California that have been changed by demolition, gentrification or, like the fictional Dickens, literally written off the map.

Below is the writeup. Join me at Ruhstaller BSMT for a book discussion over drinks, and to pick the next read.

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A biting satire about a young man's isolated upbringing and the race trial that sends him to the Supreme Court, Paul Beatty's The Sellout challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution, urban life, the civil rights movement, the father-son relationship, and the holy grail of racial equality―the black Chinese restaurant.
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians. Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.
Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

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Ruhstaller BSMT has a variety of beers on tap, as well as wine, kombucha and N/A beverages. Please feel free to BYO food.

Transportation Options include:
* Hourly street parking meters along L Street
* Covered/outdoor parking garages on L Street/Kayak Alley between 7th and 8th Street ($12)
* City garages: Capitol Garage at 1129 10th St. and City Hall Garage at 917 10th St. ($7)
* Light rail transit: Ruhstaller is close to stops on the Blue, Green and Gold lines

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