59 pages • 1 hour read
Paul BeattyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Discuss the varied reactions to the segregation Me introduces in Dickens. What does each character’s reaction reveal about what is important to them and how they relate to their community?
Place The Sellout in conversation with another one of Paul Beatty’s works, like his first novel The White Boy Shuffle (1996). How does Beatty use humor to confront themes like race and personal identity in the other work? What do Gunnar Kaufman, White Boy Shuffle’s main character, and Me have in common? How are they different?
Beatty is also a poet, and Me’s joke, “Why All That Abbott and Costello Vaudeville Mess Doesn’t Work in the Black Community” (187), is a poem in Beatty’s 1994 poetry collection, Joker, Joker, Deuce. Read Beatty’s poems and compare the verses to the prose in The Sellout. What similar techniques does he use in both forms? What possibilities does each form offer that the other does not?
African American Literature
View Collection
American Literature
View Collection
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Community
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
National Book Critics Circle Award...
View Collection
Popular Book Club Picks
View Collection
Satire
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
The Booker Prizes Awardees & Honorees
View Collection