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Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour


Rating:

2 Stars


Themes:

Social Commentary, Satire 


Thoughts: 

I’m really quite conflicted with this one. One one hand, I can see the satirical take on institutional racism in those type of start ups and sales teams. Equating a cafe to a crack den in the first few pages is definitely a strong choice since he works in a coffee shop at the time but it lets us know exactly what type of satire we are getting ourselves into right off the bat. I did enjoy Askaripour’s take on the prejudices in a workplace from Clyde with the outright targeting and white paint stunt on Buck’s first day to no one noticing Buck was the man from Starbucks till it was pointed out and him being compared to several different famous black men who look nothing alike which the individuals wouldn’t have even recognised as prejudice. Buck is extremely self obsessed, seeing all his colleagues at Starbucks as his soldiers and then behaving like the whole of his estate is behaving around and revolving around him. I did like Soroya as a passionate and ambitious individual since she did what she needed to for her family and going to school for her own calling too but she also stood up for herself and didn’t let Buck get away with everything he did. However, pretty much all of the characters fit into stereotypes which does make sense to jump into the social commentary faster but I’m not sure how well basing characters on stereotypes works towards challenging racism. I also really struggled with the ableism throughout the book, especially since it’s trying to challenge discrimination against one minority while perpetuating it against another. The constant use of the R word, seriously 5 times by page 75 was completely unnecessary. The character with Tourettes also felt like he was being used as some sort of comedic relief and then in the second half he claimed meditation had gotten rid of the tics but the research only help to control the symptoms (annafreud.org) and making out like it can be prevented like that makes out that those who live with the symptoms are choosing not to stop them which isn’t the case. This is especially harmful with how rare Tourette’s and other tic related conditions are so rarely represented.


Favourite Quote:

“The media feeds off of black blood like vampires. They want more of it, and they'll pit us against each other jus' to see it fly like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. And you know what? You gave it to 'em. You played into their hands.”

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