Black Buck, by Mateo Askaripour

Black Buck is a novel that is difficult to characterize. Is it, as it says, a sales manual? Is it a novel? Is it a memoir? Is it satire? The answer seems to be….yes. Truly, it is all of these things. However you want to classify it, though, the book is definitely entertaining.

Askaripour writes Black Buck as a sales handbook. It is peppered throughout with tips directed at the reader, as if the reader themselves is trying to learn how to be a better salesman (salesperson?). Each part of the book is centered around a specific sales technique. Don’t assume, though, that this is a dry read. In between the pull quotes of sales advice is a very involved story.

We first meet the protagonist, Darren, when he is but a mere supervisor at a Starbucks in New York City. Although Darren was a star student in high school, he has settled for a less than glamorous life, living at home with his mother, hanging out with his girlfriend, and checking in with his friends on the block. Darren is continually confronted with others’ belief that he should be doing something better, but he is unwilling to try.

Unwilling all the way up until he serves Rhett, a typical Manhattan sales bro. Just for kicks, Darren sells Rhett on a specific drink, causing a chain of events that ends with Darren becoming a new salesman at Sumwun, a tech startup in the building upstairs. As Darren struggles to move up through the ranks, we see how he is treated as the token black employee in a white partriarchy-heavy atmosphere. And let me tell you friends, some of it is incredibly hard to read. I found myself wanting to deny that this could ever happen in real life. The truth is, though, would I be very surprised to hear that it actually had? Unfortunately, no.

I’ll spare you the rest of the retelling of Black Buck’s plot. Suffice it to say that Darren shoots up through the ranks, all the while creating and running a clandestine group of sales people of color. Things go pear shaped in a particularly crazy way and by the end he has learned an important lesson.

I wasn’t sure at all what I thought of this book while I was reading it. It reminded me of the movie, Sorry to Bother You. (If you’ve seen it then you should know that nothing that crazy happens in Black Buck.) In that way, it didn’t feel truly original. Additionally, I really wasn’t sure who this was written for. Was it truly a sales manual written for other people of color wanting to break into the industry? Was it written for white people like me to get an insider’s eye view of the actual racial politics present in a company like this (any many others, I’m sure)? Was it a send up of capitalism, meant for those of us who already have a critical eye?

Sometimes, the answers to those questions really matter. But this is a blog, not an academic journal. So truthfully, who cares? The book was a fun roller coaster ride with a different perspective than I’m used to. It was a lot of fun and definitely kept me guessing. And as someone who not only likes nuance but sees the nuance in almost everything, I actually appreciate that this book can be so many different things for different people all at once. I enjoyed thinking critically about capitalism (as I always do). I (sort of) enjoyed learning about, and being horrified, by what is it Sumwun is actually selling. I enjoyed feeling appreciative that I am not in the corporate world.

That being said, my experience was Black Buck was fairly superficial, especially considering how multifaceted it is. Nothing in the story really touched my brain or my heart. I didn’t have the deep connective experience I often look for when reading fiction. So, I didn’t love it. But–it was fun enough that I’ll be sure to pick up Askaripour’s next novel.

—Babs