Paperback, 240 pages
English language
Published May 4, 2001 by Picador.
Paul Beatty, on the basis of two slim collections of poetry - Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce - has been called "a West Coast word wizard" and the "poet laureate of Generation X.".
The White Boy Shuffle is a moving, deft satire on issues of race as well as the tale of the coming of age of Gunnar Kaufman, a contemporary African American who is in no way typical. Unequivocally and without apology, Gunnar states that he is not the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. Indeed, he wishes he were, but fate has shorted him by six brothers and three uncles, cruelly cheating him out of his mythological inheritance.
And thus, unforgettably, begins the story of Gunnar's rocky expedition to manhood.
With his unparalleled ability to recreate the rhythms of everyday speech, to cut, mix, and recombine language in order to …
Paul Beatty, on the basis of two slim collections of poetry - Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce - has been called "a West Coast word wizard" and the "poet laureate of Generation X.".
The White Boy Shuffle is a moving, deft satire on issues of race as well as the tale of the coming of age of Gunnar Kaufman, a contemporary African American who is in no way typical. Unequivocally and without apology, Gunnar states that he is not the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son. Indeed, he wishes he were, but fate has shorted him by six brothers and three uncles, cruelly cheating him out of his mythological inheritance.
And thus, unforgettably, begins the story of Gunnar's rocky expedition to manhood.
With his unparalleled ability to recreate the rhythms of everyday speech, to cut, mix, and recombine language in order to evoke a whole new world of experience, Paul Beatty here establishes himself as one of the most original and inventive writers of our time. A combination of literary and street, at once intimate and breathtakingly expansive, The White Boy Shuffle is a multicultural, multigenerational epic that is exuberant, engaging, and in the moment.
An African-American Ziggy Stardust. That clever and that hilarious too. So much fun to read!
This was a great book. It took me a few days to really get into it because the voice is different than most novels, but once I got into it's rhythym, I loved it. It was like spoken word on the page. Or a Jazz tune played by Thelonious Monk in his heyday. This book flowed and the main character reverberated in my head.
WBS is the story of a black boy who grew up in California and ends up being the voice of his people (I'm not giving anything away here. He says that on the first page of the book). We follow him from third grade through his early 20s from the beaches of LA to inner-city ghettos and finally, college. It's a dark fairy tale that requires a healthy suspension of disbelief, and one I was willing to give. Read this.
