Black Buck

Mateo Askaripour’s debut novel Black Buck (2021) satirizes race relations and the contemporary culture of entrepreneurialism in the United States. Following Black protagonist Darren Vender’s transformation from a Starbucks manager into “Buck,” a hot-shot salesman, the novel skewers racism in contemporary culture and corporate institutions. Darren transitions from managing Starbucks to working in sales for the online therapy service provider Sumwun to teaching Black people and other people of color to use his sales techniques and, finally, lands in prison. Through Darren’s story, Askaripour underscores the fundamental tension between selling as a form of liberation from the racist status quo and selling out as a false ideology that re-entrenches social inequities.

Plot Summary

The Author’s Note that opens the book, written in the first person and signed by protagonist “Buck,” extolls Black salesmanship and purports that what follows will be a guide to learning how to sell. Written as part self-help book, part sales manual, the book promises the reader that if they follow Buck’s lead, they, too, will be able to overcome obstacles and access new opportunities, as he has.

Protagonist Darren Vendor, a 22-year-old Black man, lives with his mother in a brownstone that they own in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He has been working as a Starbucks manager since high school, and staff members Brian, Nicole, and Carlos look up to him. Darren enjoys spending time with his girlfriend, Soraya, the daughter of a local Yemeni bodega owner. He chats with his childhood friend, Jason, who is selling drugs on the corner so that his mom can leave the projects; Wally Cat, an older successful investor and philosophizer; and Mr. Rawlings, the elderly tenant who lives in their garden apartment. His mother wants him to go to college, but Darren thinks his life is fine as it is. That all changes when, one day, Darren upsells one of his regular customers, a hard-charging salesman named Rhett Daniels who works in the offices on the upper floors. Rhett sees the makings of a salesman in Darren, whom he invites to join Sumwun, the remote therapy service he cofounded.

Darren, like other new sales development representatives—SDRs—endures a grueling first week of trainings that seem more like hazing. Director of sales Clyde, an archetypal WASP, has it in for Darren and subjects him to repeated racism in the course of the training; all the SDRs get nicknames, and it is Clyde who gives Darren the nickname “Buck.” Ostensibly, the name derives from Darren’s work at Starbucks, but it references a racial slur historically used to dehumanize Black men during the era of chattel slavery. Darren realizes that he, unlike white SDRs, has not received extra guidance about how to succeed during training week. Nevertheless, he makes the cut, and he goes out to celebrate with the company, forgetting about the dinner his mom planned.

Three months after becoming an SDR, Darren lags behind his peers in generating leads due to his lack of connections and Clyde’s interference. A media crisis hits Sumwun: A young Black customer has died at the hands of her assistant. Darren goes on a TV talk show to help Rhett weather the crisis since he is still the only Black employee at Sumwun. At home, Darren’s mother continues to cough frequently, and he’s increasingly worried about her. Following Darren’s TV spot, a reporter investigates his background and interviews his childhood friend Jason. Darren beats Jason badly in retaliation, and footage of the beating goes public, leading to demands that Darren be fired. Rhett promises to stick with Darren as long as he is honest with him. Darren and Soraya get into a fight because she feels like he is becoming a different person, and he feels that she is no longer as uncritically loyal to him as he thinks she should be. He gets into a fight with his mother when he fears that she is breaking her promise not to sell the house, and he argues with Mr. Aziz, who tries to get him to rethink his investment in Sumwun.

Darren embraces his new identity as Buck, despite the reservations others in his life have about the change. Business at Sumwun is still faltering when cops arrive looking for Darren to inform him that his mother has died of lung cancer. When Darren learns that Mr. Rawlings knew about the cancer but promised not to tell, Darren evicts him from the building. He makes the bold move of calling a wish-list client, Barry Dee, and manages to close him, thereby becoming an account executive.

Six months after cold-calling Barry, Darren is riding high at Sumwun while working for Barry on the side. He lives a flamboyant hardworking, hard-partying lifestyle and has begun doing cocaine to keep up the pace. He reconnects with Brian, now a manager at Starbucks, and offers to help him learn how to sell. Though his first lesson gets Brian beat up, his second lesson—getting a woman’s phone number—ends in success. Brian brings a friend, Rose, who also wants to learn from Darren; despite his reservations, he takes on her and her friends Jake and Ellen, in the hopes that one of them will serve as the SDR Barry needs for his new sales campaign. Darren’s experiential lessons in selling, designed to instill confidence in his Black pupils, also end up jeopardizing them: Brian ends up in jail after the group runs out on the check at a high-end restaurant when the goal was to persuade the waiter that they weren’t going to pay. Rose, homeless, crashes with Darren at his place. She nails her interview with Barry Dee, becoming his new SDR, and Brian gets out of jail. Rose’s success at landing a job draws the attention of friends, and soon more people want to learn from Darren. The Happy Campers organization, dedicated to helping people of color achieve success, is born. Darren reconnects with Soraya and Jason and convinces them to join.

Six months later, Happy Campers is thriving, expanding globally, and attracting opposition: the White United Society of Salespeople, or WUSS, founded by Clyde. WUSS claims that by excluding white people, the Happy Campers give people of color an unfair advantage. Clyde performs a series of racist publicity stunts designed to foment white grievance against the supposedly unfair advantages people of color derive from affirmative action. Rhett repeatedly asks Darren if he is involved with the Happy Campers, and Darren denies it. Darren discovers that someone is leaking information from the Happy Campers to WUSS. Rose and Jason kidnap Clyde, torture him, and film him denouncing WUSS. Someone has leaked Darren’s involvement with the Happy Campers to the press, and Rhett feels betrayed by Darren and is no longer willing to stick up for him. The Happy Campers’ headquarters burns down, and Darren’s assistant, Trey, is presumed dead.

Though Darren manages to shift public opinion somewhat in his favor during a TV interview, he nonetheless leaves Sumwun to focus on the Happy Campers. Jason, hospitalized after being attacked, reveals that he’s been dealing drugs again and asks Darren to make his last drop for him and collect the cash. Belatedly, Darren discovers that it is a trap and that he is being framed for the possession of several pounds of cocaine. Darren learns that his assistant, Trey, is alive and that he is Mr. Rawlings’s grandson. He also learns that Mr. Rawlings had a stroke and died in an assisted living home after Darren kicked him out. As revenge, Trey contacted Clyde and gave him the idea to start WUSS. Clyde has tipped off his connections at the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Darren ends up in jail, serving an eight-year sentence. Nonetheless, he ends the book claiming to have achieved true freedom and encouraging readers to follow his lead and do the same.