While talking to Marpessa about the daunting possibility of going to jail, the narrator remarks, “Hampton made a good point in court when he said that if Hominy’s ‘servitude’ was tantamount to human bondage, then corporate America better be ready to fight a hell of a class-action lawsuit filed by generations of uncompensated interns”(283). Within the span of one sentence, Beatty addresses his poignant portrayal of modern slavery,\u00a0while launching a totally separate critique of \u00a0internships in America. On a broader scale, while the novel centers around themes of racial inequality, media’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, and segregation, it also critiques seemingly unrelated topics ranging from economic theory, modern philosophy, \u00a0and the Pew Research Center.\u00a0On one level, Beatty often combines seemingly separate themes for comedic affect. More deeply however, by combining almost all aspects of American culture with his overarching critique of race-relations and identity in America, Beatty urges that, wether implicit or explicit, racism permeates all aspects of todays culture. Further, the confusion the reader may feel while dissecting the connections between Beatty’s\u00a0plentiful allusions reflects the nebulous\u00a0nature of race and identity in America. In acknowledging race’s complexity, Beatty’s is decidedly not championing a panacea for todays problems, but rather calling the reader to follow the narrator’s lead in unearthing the racial complexities that lie underneath American culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While talking to Marpessa about the daunting possibility of going to jail, the narrator remarks, “Hampton made a good point in court when he said that if Hominy’s ‘servitude’ was tantamount to human bondage, then corporate America better be ready to fight a hell of a class-action lawsuit filed by generations of uncompensated interns”(283). Within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":402,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paul-beatty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/402"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}