Appearing at Morristown & Morris Township Library | 1:20 pm – 2:10 pm
In conversation with Rakesh Satyal.
About the author
New York Times bestselling author Mateo Askaripour aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. His first novel, Black Buck, takes on racism in corporate America with humor and wit. Askaripour was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars poised to make waves,” and Black Buck was a “Read With Jenna” Today Show book club pick. He lives in Brooklyn.
MFOB featured book: Black Buck
There’s nothing like a Black salesman on a mission. Black Buck is a hilarious, razor-sharp skewering of America’s workforce—a propulsive, crackling debut that explores ambition and race, and makes way for a necessary new vision of the American dream.
An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.
After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.
