An Analysis of Black Subjectivity in The Sellout from the Perspective of Cultural Identity

In 2016, Paul Beatty, an African American writer, made history as the first American author to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for his fourth novel, The Sellout. With biting humor and satire, it tells the absurd story of Me trying to reinstate slavery and segregation in Dickens, leading to his trial in the United States Supreme Court. The novel reveals contemporary US racial discrimination, historical legacy, and social injustice. This paper, based on Stuart Hall's cultural identity theory, uses close-reading to analyze the manifestations, causes, and reconstruction of African-Americans' black subjectivity crisis in the novel from the perspective of their identity dilemma. It reveals the complexity of African-Americans' identity and self-worth quest and their cultural identity re-evaluation and construction in a multicultural context.