Born in the agrarian ghetto of Dickens - on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles - the narrator of The Sellout is raised by a single father a controversial sociologist and spends his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. Led to believe his fathers pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his familys financial woes he is shocked to discover when his father is killed in a police shoot-out that there never was a memoir. All thats left is a bill for a drive-through funeral.Fuelled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from embarrassment. Enlisting the help of Dickens most famous resident - Hominy Jenkins - he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school. What follows is a remarkable journey that challenges the sacred tenets of the United States Constitution urban life the civil rights movement and the holy grail of racial equality - the black Chinese restaurant.