by Chloe Ablett
Black Buck knows it can be easy to forget about the relationships that keep us grounded and appreciative in a capitalist world overly obsessed with ambition. When one of us beats the odds and ‘makes it’, we believe that everyone can do the same. Askaripour reminds us that capitalism does not work to benefit all of us: capitalism requires a hierarchy, and black people always have it twice as hard. Darren Venderis is a 22-year-old working in Starbucks and living with his mother in Bed-Stuy when he meets CEO Reiss Daniels. As Darren’s career progresses, his relationships with those dearest to him hang in the balance.
“I am Black man on a mission. No, I am a Black salesman on a mission.”
Mateo Askiapour’s debut is a multi-layered, shrewd satirical take on racism in the corporate world. In black spaces, the community is a shield protecting its members from the harmful effects of racist and capitalist hyper-individualism, and Black Buck shows us how our obsession with success can weather the bonds that provide us with refuge in an uncertain world. The novel begins with Darren Vender, a 22-year-old working in Starbucks and living with his mother in Bed-Stuy. There Darren meets CEO Reiss Daniels, who asks him to join his NYC tech startup: Sumwun. Darren soon finds himself to be the only black person in an all-white company and in his efforts to fit in—and be a successful salesman—Darren morphs into someone unrecognisable: he’s become ‘Buck’.
Buck would do absolutely anything to progress his career, even abandoning his mother in Bed-Stuy and setting aside his integrity. But it is the ensemble of Darren’s mother, girlfriend Soraya, best friend Jason, and neighbours Mr Rawlings and Wally Cat that keep him grounded, having taught Darren how to navigate the world. Each morning he sits with Wally Cat, an investor, and listens to him pontificate about decision-making and how to move through white spaces as a black man. Black Buck itself is framed as a quasi-self-help book, with Darren speaking directly to us and interjecting at certain points in the story to provide life lessons, unveiling insight into Darren’s convictions and sense of humour.
“Reader: If you are a black man, the key to any white person’s heart is the ability to shuck, jive, or freestyle. But use it wisely and sparingly. Otherwise you’re liable to turn into Steve Harvey.”
Sumwun oozes toxicity and is where Darren meets Clyde, the sales manager who is also a physical embodiment of systemic racism. It is Clyde who gives Darren the nickname ‘Buck’ and showers him in a downpour of white paint on his first day, snarking that “the white would help you fit in better.” Black Buck has drawn many comparisons to black comedy Sorry To Bother You, where a black telemarketer feigns a white accent to rake in sales. This satire ultimately gives itself over to fantasy but Black Buck, on the other hand, never strays too far from realism. We believe that a company clutching at straws to field accusations of racism would parade its sole black employee on TV for “optics”.
As Darren’s career progresses, his relationships with those dearest to him hang in the balance, in particular the relationship with his best friend Jason who becomes increasingly involved in selling drugs, desperate to pay off his mother’s debts. Bed-Stuy, too, changes at the hands of gentrification. When one of us beats the odds and ‘makes it’, we believe that everyone can do the same. Askaripour reminds us that capitalism does not work to benefit all of us: capitalism requires a hierarchy, and black people always have it twice as hard. Darren’s mother and Wally Cat say it throughout and we see it in Darren’s co-worker Arnold (later nicknamed Frodo), a white man who starts at Sumwun alongside Darren and is allowed the freedom to fail while the latter is always on trial. Each time Darren chooses the corporate world over the community he loses a little of himself, eventually becoming an entirely different person. Each of his major relationships in Bed-Stuy reach breaking point, and only a tragedy opens him to re-evaluating what success is worth to him.
“What I want most for you is to be free.”
Darren discovers that what he had wanted all along was freedom, the freedom to be himself. He rewrites his idea of success and allows the strength of his community to make him feel accomplished. He even hatches a plan for people of colour to come together to “infiltrate America’s sales force”, teaching them the skills that run tech companies all over the country and giving them the confidence to kick down the doors of the corporate world. But ultimately, Black Buck knows it can be easy to forget about the relationships that keep us grounded and appreciative in a capitalist world overly obsessed with ambition.
By Chloe Ablett
CHLOE ABLETT is a Marketing Assistant forging a career in publishing. She is also a UCL MA Publishing graduate. You can find her on Twitter @_chloeablett.
Black Buck on 5 January 2021
Genres: Contemporary, Debut, Satire, African American
Pages: 388
Format: Paperback
Afrori
Goodreads
For fans of Sorry to Bother You and The Wolf of Wall Street—a crackling, satirical debut novel about a young man given a shot at stardom as the lone Black salesman at a mysterious, cult-like, and wildly successful startup where nothing is as it seems. An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor. After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as 'Buck', a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he 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.
Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce: it is a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American Dream.