Black Buck

“There’s nothing like a black man on a mission. No, let me revise that. There’s nothing like a black salesman on a mission.” Thus begins Mateo Askaripour’s Black Buck, the story of Darren, who — after convincing one of his Starbucks regulars to try a new drink — gets hired at that regular’s start-up to work in their sales division. Darren, a Black and Latino 22-year-old, is immediately thrown into an all-white tech world full of racism, elitism, and inflated senses of self. They soon nickname him “Buck,” after Starbucks, and he tries to reinvent himself as a super salesman. (The marketing materials compare this book to Black Jewish filmmaker Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, where a young Black telemarketer adopts a white accent to succeed, and while yes, there’s a similar vibe of a Black-man-beating-white-men-at-their-own-game-in-corporate-America, it’s also wholly different.)

What results is a story that is at once an incisive satire of corporate America and tech start-ups, but also a novel with so much heart. I wanted Buck, and his Happy Campers (young people of color he helps mentor to find a way into the corporate world) to actually exist. Plus, Askaripour is funny and there are so many sentences I read, and thought, hot damn: “My heart beat harder than a racist cop in Kentucky.” The structure of the book — Darren (“Buck”) narrating to you, telling you how to be a salesperson — works super well, allowing him to address larger themes such as gentrification, white supremacy, grief, and trying to succeed in a world that wasn’t built for your success. A tall order, but I loved so much about Black Buck, and you will too. Honestly, from that very first sentence, I was in.

Rating: ★★★★★