The Sellout

Author: Paul Beaty
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2015

We do not know his first name.  He is the son of F. K. Me and in legal documents he uses Me as his last name.  His married-to-someone-else girlfriend Marpessa calls him Bonbon.  In that sense he is Bonbon Me, instead of F. K. Me Jr.  His enemy (he has only one enemy) calls him “sellout”.  He grew up and lives in Dickens, Los Angeles.

(He was a finalist of a spelling bee and his opponent received the word “omphaloskepsis” to spell in the final and he received the word “bonbon”.  A bonbon is a small chocolate confection. They are usually filled with liqueur or other sweet ingredients, and sold wrapped in colored foil.  Omphaloskepsis means contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation.)

His father was a social scientist and homeschooled his son until he could enter high school.  His father was tough on him.  When he was having difficulties with memorizing the periodic table, his father advised him to “think about not so much what you are doing but the importance of why you are doing it”.  When he tried to be a smart aleck by asking “wouldn’t slavery have been less psychologically damaging if they’d thought of it as gardening,” he received a vicious beating “that would have made Kunte Kinte wince”.

After being the only person who graduated from his high school in Dickens, Bonbon went to University of California Riverside and graduated with a major in animal sciences and minor in crop sciences and management.

He owns a two acre farm in Dickens.  He grows lemons, apricots, pomegranates, plums, satsumas, figs, pineapples, avocados, corn, wheat, Japanese rice, cabbage, lettuce, legumes, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelons, and grapes.  He also has cows, horses, and pigs.

“People go crazy at the sight of a square watermelon.  And like the black president, you think that after two terms looking at the dude in a suit delivering the State of the Union address, you’d get used to square watermelons, but somehow you never do.”

Neighbors liked the tasty fruit and milk from Bonbon’s farm.  On the Hood day, Marpessa took Bonbon’s hand and confronted her husband.  “I just want you to know I’m F.ing Bonbon.”  Oblivious to the thorns, her husband stuck remains of the pineapple, skin and all, into his mouth, slurping and sucking out every last drop of the juice.  “Shit, if I can get some of this pineapple every morning, I’d F. the N. too”.

(N. stands for the n-word.)

Bonbon’s neighbor, Hominy Jenkins is the last surviving member of the Little Rascals.  He was hired as an understudy to Buckwheat Thomas.  When they were little, Bonbon, Marpessa, and other kids would jet over to Hominy’s house to watch Little Rascals.  What would be cooler than watching Little Rascals with a little rascal?

(The Little Rascals is an American series of comedy short films chronicling a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures.  See Little Rascals on Wiki)

There are enough clues in the story to figure out where “Dickens” is actually. 

“As the supposed Murder Capitol of the World Dickens never got much tourist trade.”  

“Dickens was founded in 1868”.  

Marpessa is a bus driver who drives the bus #125 that runs from Norwalk Metro Station to Pacific Coast/Park.  He gets Marpessa's bus at the Rosecrans/Long Beach stop located at the corner of the Rosecrans Ave and Long Beach Blvd junction.  

“My father nigger-whispered a woman off of the Blue line metro rail tracks.”  Blue line runs from Long Beach to Los Angeles (downtown).  

“Just as Bloods don’t use the letter C because it’s the first letter in Crip, …”

Putting all these clues together, you realize that Dickens is Compton or is a part of Compton.  The following is a description of Compton from the “Black Past” home page. (www.blackpast.org)

Compton is a city in Southern California, located in south Los Angeles County. Compton was settled in 1867 by thirty pioneer families led by Griffith Dickenson Compton, (the green highlight is mine.) after whom the city was named. The first black families came to the city just before World War II. Throughout the twentieth century, Compton was a middle-class suburb with relatively inexpensive housing.

Prior to World War II, Compton was 95 percent white. The city adopted racially restrictive covenants in 1921 to bar African Americans and other people of color from the municipality. Civic leaders, real-estate agents, and law-enforcement agencies perpetuated this racial exclusion with their own practices.

By the mid-1950s, white flight—the process of white families rapidly leaving a neighborhood due to changing racial demographics—was spreading in Compton. Real-estate brokers accelerated this process by scaring white families with threats of low property values due to the new racially integrated neighborhoods. The black population in Compton rose from 5 percent in 1940 to 40 percent in 1960. The Watts Riots of 1965 accelerated black flight from Los Angeles and in turn increased white flight from Compton. By 1970, Compton had become 65 percent African American.

Growing unemployment and poverty led to a rise in crime and black street gangs. The notorious street gang the “Crips” was founded in 1969 in south central Los Angeles. This triggered the creation of the rival gang, the “Bloods”, in Compton. By the 1980s this territorial gang-banger environment intensified due to the introduction of crack cocaine into black neighborhoods. Compton became internationally recognized as a city dominated by gangs and violence.

Gang violence peaked shortly after the riots following Rodney King’s infamous arrest and beating by police in 1992. Nonetheless, by this point, middle-class blacks had begun to flee the city. Compton’s overall population dropped dramatically by the year 2000, as the city became mostly Latino.

Bonbon’s father founded the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals that met by-monthly at the Dum Dum Donut restaurant which is the safest place in the hood.  Dum Dum Intellectuals liked to think of themselves as the black equivalent of the Jacobin Club of Paris during the French revolution.  Sometimes they had intellectual discussions, sometimes they had presentations, and sometimes they had standup comedy.  Foy Cheshire, a black activist, is one such intellectual who came from a rich neighborhood outside of Dickens.  Foy once said, “I tried to read Huckleberry Finn, to my grandchildren, but couldn’t go past page six because the book is fraught with the ’n-word’.  I knew my babies weren’t ready to comprehend Huckleberry Finn on its own merits.  That’s why I took the liberty to rewrite Mark Twain’s masterpiece.  Where the repugnant ’n-word’ occurs, I replaced it with `warrior’ and the word ‘slave’ with ‘dark-skinned volunteer'.  I also retitled the book ``The Pejorative-Free Adventures and Intellectual and Spiritual Journeys of African-American Jim and His Young Protege, White Brother Huckleberry Finn, as They Go in Search of the Lost Black Family Unit.”  Bonbon used to read a novel sitting in the back at Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals meetings.

Charisma Molina is the assistant principal of Chaff Middle School in Dickens.  In a way, her school is 'segregated'.  The English as a Second Language speakers were on a different track than the English When and Only If I Feel Like it speakers.  

(I participated in a three-week Mathematics Institute designed to help middle-school and high-school teachers at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) in the early 2000s.  I met a high school teacher from Compton at the Institute.  I was not happy with him initially because he showed very little interest in the subject matter.  (Teachers were paid to attend the Institute and were chosen by the LACOE administration via an application process.)  After a few days, once I got to know him, he told me that what he was learning at the Institute was not helpful to him.  His main goal in the school is “survival”.  What he was learning was not related to that main goal.  He was not learning any survival techniques.)

Bonbon decides to make some social changes.  If the integration is not working, then why not segregate?  On Hominy’s birthday, he organized a party on Marpessa’s bus.  It has a new sign above the seats reserved for the senior citizens.  “Priority Seating For Seniors, Disabled, and Whites”.  Apparently, no one has removed the sign even after the party.  Foy confronted Bonbon at a Dum Dum Intellectuals meeting.  “Sellout, did you know some racist asshole put a sign on a public bus…”.

This is one of the best books I have ever read.  It is a riot from the beginning all the way to the end.  I had to use the Internet often to check out references, to understand the meaning of some passages, to check histories, and to find about historical celebrities.  I listened to Bessie Smith, watched Little Rascals, and watched Tom Snyder's interview with four of the little rascals including Buckwheat Thomas.  (Tom Snyder Show Nov 2, 1974)

I think Beatty should be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature.