{"id":704,"date":"2016-10-26T10:55:23","date_gmt":"2016-10-26T10:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=704"},"modified":"2016-10-26T10:55:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T10:55:23","slug":"paul-beatty-first-american-winner-of-the-man-booker-prize-for-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/10\/26\/paul-beatty-first-american-winner-of-the-man-booker-prize-for-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Beatty, first American winner of the Man Booker Prize for Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Beatty has won this year\u2019s Man Booker Prize for <em>The Sellout<\/em>. His work satirises the hypocrisy and contradictions of racial politics in the US, drawing attention to the effects of economic and social segregation on the black communities of America. This most recent novel tells the story of an African-American visionary who reinstates slavery and segregation in his LA suburb to put it back on the map, and the subsequent Supreme Court trial \u2013 \u2018Me v the United States of America\u2019. \u00a0Beatty\u2019s second novel, <em>Tuff<\/em>, explores the world of NYC gangs and the mentors who promise to save black men from a life of crime through capitalism. <em>White Boy Shuffle<\/em>, his first novel, explores the history of black leadership through a black poet with a European name, Gunnar Kaufman, who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to the \u2018hood in search of authentic black experience. Gunnar witnesses police oppression (the LAPD are \u2018dressed to oppress\u2019), riots (a \u2018psychological placebo\u2019, a \u2018vitriolic stimulant\u2019 and \u2018Carnival, ghetto style\u2019) and gang culture (Psycho Loco and his gang, the Gun Toting Hooligans, are laugh out loud parodies).<\/p>\n<p>Throughout his work, Beatty focuses on the roles of parents in shaping his young black and male protagonists, and the transmission of the legacies of slavery and segregation from one generation to the next. On Radio 4 this morning, Beatty said his work contemplates \u2018how we measure progress\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>This award should propel Beatty\u2019s earlier novels back into print; come on Random House, this stuff deserves a wider readership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Beatty has won this year\u2019s Man Booker Prize for The Sellout. His work satirises the hypocrisy and contradictions of racial politics in the US, drawing attention to the effects of economic and social segregation on the black communities of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/10\/26\/paul-beatty-first-american-winner-of-the-man-booker-prize-for-literature\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40445],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}