Where to start? With the narrator; black, educated – home
educated by a social scientist father with his own take on race and street
educated by dint of living in the city suburb of Dickens, albeit on an urban
smallholding. Or with Dickens itself; a
ghetto community on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, whose twinning
overtures are turned down by Juarez who see it as too violent, Chernobyl as too
polluted, and Kinshasa as too black. Or
with the alleged crime: violation of the thirteenth amendment through the
ownership of a slave.
It matters not as once the machine gun prose
of Paul Beatty starts everything gets shot at as the narrator seeks to explain
how he ended up in front of the Supreme Court despite his well-meaning efforts
to recreate the self-respect and community spirit of Dickens. OK, his methods were unconventional and
counter-intuitive, not to mention often hilarious.
With each paragraph packed with meaning (and
peppered with expletives) it is not a quick read, but in the main it is a fun
read. Sure, serious points are made but
more in exasperation than anger.
Readers not black nor American (like me) may
miss some of the jokes and references but that still leaves plenty to laugh at
and think about.
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