The SelloutThe Sellout

Born in the "Agrarian Ghetto" of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of "The Sellout" spent his childhood as the subject in racially charge psychological studies, and has since resigned himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians. Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he is told that his father's work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral. Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident - the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in front of the Supreme Court.