The Sellout

by

Paul Beatty

Dickens

Dickens, the fictional “ghetto community” where the narrator grew up and the entire novel is set, is a city within the greater Los Angeles area. The vast majority of Dickens’ population is black, with a…

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Marpessa’s Bus

The narrator’s sweetheart Marpessa Dawson is a bus driver, and her bus is the backdrop against which their romance is rekindled. The narrator’s all-consuming, devoted love for Marpessa means that even something as ordinary…

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Satsumas

The narrator grows several different crops on the farmland he purchased with the settlement money from his father’s death, including watermelons, marijuana, and satsumas (a kind of citrus fruit). The fruit the narrator grows…

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