What's Next? discussion

Darkly comic debut and satirical take on a young black man, Darren “Buck” Vender, from Bed-Stuy inexplicably landing his dream job in sales at an (all-white) tech start up. Everything is perfect...until it isn’t; the ending was, for me, jaw dropping. This is a book that holds no punches on the inequity and the implicit/explicit racism present in the corporate world and some mainstream media. As a satire, it’s easy to dismiss the buffoonery and antics of the book’s aggrieved white people who resent Buck’s astronomical rise and deploy horrifically racist tactica to destroy him. It can feel like the author lazily evokes a caricature of real people, until one uneasily recalls the social justice movement of 2020 and the rhetoric, actions and biases it exposed. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. The prose and storyline are almost cinematic; would make a GREAT Netflix adaptation. This is of my 5-star reads for 2021.

Thanks. Will check it out.