Black Buck
The 'darkly comic' blisteringly smart satire on race, tech and the new American dream - A New York Times bestseller
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4.0 • 8 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
*A New York Times Bestseller*
'Mesmerizing. . . a high wire act full of verve and dark, comic energy.' Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad
My goal is to teach you how to sell. And if I'm half the salesman every newspaper, blog, and hustler in New York City says I am, then you are in luck. With my story, I will give you the tools to go out and create the life you want. Sound fair?
Meet Buck. But before Buck was the Muhammad Ali of sales, floating like a butterfly and selling like a demon, he was Darren: an unambitious twenty-two-year-old living with his mother and working at Starbucks. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of NYC's hottest tech startup, results in Darren joining Rhett's elite sales team.
On his first day Darren realizes he is the only Black person in the company, and when things start to get strange, he reimagines himself as 'Buck', a ruthless salesman, unrecognizable to his friends and family. Money, partying, and fame soon follow Buck, and wherever he goes more is never enough.
But when tragedy strikes at home, Buck begins to hatch a plan to help young people of colour infiltrate America's sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.
An earnest work of satire, Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of office culture; a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.
'A hilarious, gleaming satire as radiant as its author. . . this novel is both balm and bomb.' Nafissa Thompson-Spires, author of Heads of the Colored People
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Askaripour eviscerates corporate culture in his funny, touching debut. Darren, a young Black man, lives with his mom in Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy neighborhood and manages a midtown Manhattan Starbucks. He's content with his life and girlfriend, Soraya, but people tell him he could do more he was valedictorian at Bronx Science, after all. Opportunity knocks when Darren persuades Rhett Daniels, the CEO of tech startup Sumwun and a Starbucks regular, to change his usual order. Rhett is impressed (his response: "Did you just try to reverse close me?") and invites Darren to an interview, which leads to a sales job before he understands what the company actually does (it's a platform for virtual therapy sessions). Darren makes good money, but struggles to keep up his commitments to his family and Soraya as Rhett pulls him into heavy after-hours partying. When an employee in China is charged with murder, Sumwun crashes, and so does Darren's life. In an author's note, Askaripour suggests the book is meant to serve as a manual for aspiring Black salesmen, and the device is thrillingly sustained throughout, with lacerating asides to the reader on matters of race. ("The key to any white person's heart is the ability to shuck, jive, or freestyle. But use it wisely and sparingly.") Darren, meanwhile, is alternately said by various white characters to resemble Malcolm X, Sidney Poitier, MLK, and Dave Chappelle, while he struggles to hold onto a sense of self, which the author conveys with a potent blend of heart and dramatic irony. Askaripour is always closing in this winning and layered bildungsroman.
