Paul Beatty’s The Sellout as Allegory of the U.S. Carceral System

This study looks into Paul Beatty’s 2016 Man Booker Prize winning novel The Sellout (2015) as a powerful literary elaboration on the politics of racial identity. In naturalizing slavery and segregation in current U.S. society—the idea at core Sellout—Beatty deploys racism along continuum from past to present, rather than something or memory contemporary so-called post-racial world. present analysis examines how devices parody allegory assist creation satire, particularly carceral system. fictional events Dickens, well Bonbon Me’s story, it is argued, are only first layer signification plot that allegorizes what perhaps most racialized criminal system world, one several critics see efficient apparatus social control after Jim Crow. Through second meaning, controversial representations novel, namely segregation, explored. signs his use hyperbole stereotype, also marks black postblackness critique registers voice debate ‘blackness’