The Sellout

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?