PORCHLIGHT LITERATI READING GROUP DISCUSSION GUIDE
THE SELLOUT BY PAUL BEATTY
Before We Meet…
General Guidelines
As you read, try to write down passages that thrilled or even confused you. Bring these notes to the
reading group. They may help you remember your thoughts and ideas, how you felt as you read
the book.
Know that you are welcome to attend even if you haven’t read the book. Our discussions may stir
you to offer the group an insight yet to be voiced.
Know that differing ideas and opinions are welcome. All voices will be heard and valued as there
is no singular or correct way to interpret a book.
General Discussions Questions*
*Skim through or save until we meet. There’s no pop quiz. These questions are for your benefit to
use as you like.
For Your Consideration…
1. How did you experience the book? Were you immediately drawn into the story—or did it take
some time? Did the book intrigue, amuse, disturb, alienate, irritate, or frighten you?
2. Do you find the characters convincing? Believable? Are they fully developed, complex human
beings—or one-dimensional?
3. Which characters did you particularly admire or dislike? What about them elicited those
feelings? Do you feel you understand what motivates their choices?
4. Who in the book would you like to meet? What would you ask or say?
5. If you could insert yourself as a character in the book, what role would you play?
6. Does the book remind you of your own life? An event? A person—like a friend, family member,
boss, co-worker?
7. Is the plot well developed? Believable? Do you feel manipulated along the way, or do plot
events unfold naturally, organically?
8. Is the story plot or character driven? Do events unfold quickly or is more time spent developing
characters' inner lives? Does it make a difference to your enjoyment?
9. Consider the ending. Did you expect it or were you surprised? Was it manipulative or forced?
Was it neatly wrapped up—maybe too neatly? Or was the story unresolved, ending on an
ambiguous note?
10. If you could speak to the author, what would you want to know?
Discussions Questions for The Sellout
1. Do you find this book offensive? Why or why not? What other readers might take offense
at The Sellout? Why is Paul Beatty's language so incendiary?
2. In his lengthy Barnes & Noble review, Stefan Beck says that The Sellout will "shock all of us into
reexamining what we think we know about race in America." Did the book have that effect on you?
Did it alter how you, personally, view black-white relations in the US?
3. What is the thematic significance (and humor) in the fact that the father of the book's narrator
dropped the double-e from his last name, resulting in the surname Me—and, thus, the title of the
Supreme Court case, Me vs. the United States?
4. How off-putting, or difficult, did you find the first 300 pages or so of this book? Was it difficult
to follow the narrative thread, to get your "fictional footing"? Why might the author have opened
his book with this stylistic technique?
5. What is the purpose of instituting slavery? What does Me hope to accomplish by doing so?
6. What do you think of the white woman who utters this: "[Y]ou're a beautiful woman who just
happens to be black, and you're far too smart not to know that it isn't race that's the problem but
class"? What do you think of her statement? What do you think the author thinks of it?
7. What about academia? What does Beatty think of black intellectuals and, particularly, the
attempt to sanitize Twain's classic?
I also improved Jim's diction, rejiggered the plotline a bit, and
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.
(By the way, pay attention to the use of the word "rejiggered.")
8. What is the title's significance? First, what is a sellout?—define it. What is being sold out...or who
is being sold out...and who is doing the selling out?
(questions sourced and adapted from I Love Libraries and LitLovers)