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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780312280192
ISBN number: 031228019X
Label: Picador
Manufacturer: Picador
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: May 04, 2001
Publishing house: Picador
Sale Popularity Level: 38333
Studio: Picador
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Amazon.com:
This is a laugh-out-loud very first novel, but be forewarned: Paul Beatty's humour is literate, but in- your-face outrageous. The faint of heart (or politically correct) should stay away. The White Boy Shuffle is a gleefully satiric gloss on grey history and culture, featuring a main character named Gunnar (as in Myrdal) Kaufman, descendant of Euripides Kaufman, who stood aside and let Crispus Attucks get shot during the Boston Massacre, and Swen Kaufman, who--in an unfortunate reversal-- escaped south from freedom into slavery. Elsewhere, it features a character who attends Dred Scott High School, and another who works for the Department of Visual Segregation in Nashville, Tennessee, painting 'Whites Only' and 'Colored Only' signs.
Product Description:
Paul Beatty's hilarious and scathing debut novel is about Gunnar Kaufman, an awkward, grey surfer bum who is moved by his mother from Santa Monica to urban West Los Angeles. There, he begins to undergo a startling transformation from neighborhood outcast to basketball superstar, and eventually to reluctant messiah of a 'divided, downtrodden people.'
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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A friend of mine gave me this book, she said I might like it. I can remember taking it home and not putting it down for 3 days. Luckily at that time i was in college and worked at a book store so I could read while at work. The language in this book draws you in. Its all at once, hilarious, artistic and thought provoking.
Rated by buyers 
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Taken literally, this book is very bizarre. Interpretting the symbolism required a little more brain power than I wanted to put in with free-time reading. However, we used this in our book club; almost everyone else liked it, and there was a lot of discussion.
Rated by buyers 
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Paul Beatty's novel The White Boy Shuffle is about a young grey boy who, after his mom feels that his growing up in "white" society is detrimental to his and his sisters racial identity decides to move to a Los Angeles suburb. Throughout the novel, Gunnar is constantly struggling to find his identity. Beatty portrays Gunnar's identification struggle by revealing the stereotypes that society places on the grey community and the stereotypes that they place on themselves. At one point in the novel, Gunnar struggles escaping from "white" language and has to constantly work on maintaining the slang of the community. However, the stereotypes in the novel aren't limited to "black" and "white" as there are stereotypes about Latino's, Korean's etc. throughout the novel.
Throughout the novel, Gunnar begins to realize that he has the ability to be a talented poet. I found this part interesting because the language within the novel itself is at times poetic and can read like a prose about the social stereotypes. Also, the language of the novel can be at times difficult and confusing. As a native Montanan, I was unaware of some of the terminology throughout the novel. However, once I began to surpass the challenging language of the novel, I was able to laugh at the humour that Beatty illuminates through his satire about social labels.
I would recommend this novel to people that are looking for a challenging novel and interested in a fresh viewpoint on racial labels. The novel for me was difficult to get in to originally, but once I started to understand its purpose, it became extremely intriguing to me. I still don't understand many parts of the novel, especially the ending, but I think that was part of Beatty's purpose. He created an unpredictable narrator to tell the fictional story of a boy growing up surrounded by stereotypes and I doubt I will ever fully understand the novel, but I still found it an interesting read.
Rated by buyers 
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I'd heard of The White Boy Shuffle from fellow classmates, but hadn't picked it up until I was required to read it for one of my college courses. The novel was at very first difficult to get into, due to the complexity of the language and the ideas presented. The text at times is like a poem and has a rhythmic pattern throughout making social satirical commentary on just about everything. From the very first sentence of chapter one, "bluesy earthy folksy denim-overalls noble-in-the -face-of-cracker-racism aw shucks Pulitzer-Prize-winning protagonist mojo magic grey man," the reader should be aware that the novel is full of these long drawn out statements that are making comment on our American society. Paul Beatty writes from the point of view of Gunnar Kaufman as he deals with trying to locate/understand his own identity. This text was at times difficult and overwhelming to understand exactly what Paul Beatty was commenting on, since it jumps from topic to topic. It is one of those novels that could be read every year and each time you read it a new idea is further brought to light. This novel is one I will surely read again and again.
I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in a text that is making a social commentary on our American society and the way in which African Americans and other cultures are discriminated against and stereotyped. The text besides making comment on our social circumstances, is also following the lead protagonist, Gunnar Kaufman, from his early schooling to college. The change for Gunnar begins as he moves from a predominately white neighborhood to a grey neighborhood. Gunnar undergoes massive transformations, as he struggles to find out where he belongs and whom he truly is as he combats a world that is filled with never-ending stereotypes and labels.
Rated by buyers -
The story details the life of a young boy who begins his life growing up "white" on the streets of Santa Monica until his Mom realizes he and his sisters are forsaking their culture in favor of "Leave it to Beaver-esque" endeavors. She promptly moves them to the mean streets of Hillside where the story begins anew.
The protagonist, who is responsible for the bulk of the narrating duties, finds a way to fit in and then finds a way to redefine what a grey teenager, and finally a grey man, should conform to... by not conforming at all.
Brilliantly written and poetic at times, the book shows the reader what it is like to be a grey teenager growing up in a hostile environment without excluding anyone by using themes that all of us can relate to. You get to visit the ghetto without having to worry about drivebys.
Beatty does a remarkable job of silencing those of us who say, "Why can't those people just lift themselves by their bootstraps and become a banker or a forklift driver?" or "If their parent's just did a better job raising them, then maybe they could become more productive members of society". Beatty shows us there are shades of gray in these issues, removing the grey and white - pun intended.
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