The White Boy Shuffle (1996)

The White Boy Shuffle is the 1996 first novel of poet Paul Beatty. A satiric coming-of-age tale following the life of poet, basketball star, and self-described “Negro Demagogue” Gunnar Kaufman, it has been noted for its postmodern treatment of African-American gender and sexuality in addition to race.

Plot summary

In the book's prologue, the reader meets the narrator, Gunnar Kaufman, a prolific African-American poet whose astronomically successful book, Watermelanin, has sold 126 million copies, elevating him to the status of "Negro Demagogue". The prologue asserts that what follows are Gunnar memoirs, "the battlefield remains of a frightened deserter in the eternal war for civility" (2). The novel opens with a comic survey of Gunnar's family tree, as his mother relates the tales of his family history to him and his sisters. Gunnar in turn regales his classmates with the tales of his ancestors, one of whom Gunnar claims dodged the bullet that eventually killed Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. Gunnar is a young boy growing up in affluent, predominantly white Santa Monica, California, with his mother and sisters. His absent father is a sketch artist for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and rarely sees his children. Gunnar's friends are white, and he spends his free time making enough mischief to gain him mild admonishments from the Santa Monica Shore Patrol.

When Gunnar and his sisters tell their mother they do not want to attend an all-black summer camp because the children there "are different from us", Ms. Kaufman immediately packs up a U-Haul and relocates her family to the West Los Angeles neighborhood of Hillside, a predominantly black community surrounded by a concrete wall that Gunnar describes as the ghetto (37). In Hillside, the Kaufman children encounter an altogether different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to in Santa Monica. Gunnar learns "the hard way that social norms in Santa Monica were unforgivable breaches of proper Hillside etiquette, and soon after arriving is beaten up by one of the area's local gangs, the "Gun Totin' Hooligans" (52).

Enrolling in the local junior high, Gunnar is offered protection by an administrator who fears that Gunnar's unfamiliarity with Hillside social norms will make him an easy target for harassment. However, Gunnar soon strikes up a friendship with Nicholas Scoby when he is paired with the "thuggish boy" in a reading of William Shakespeare's Othello (66). Scoby is a prodigious basketball player, with a remarkable ability to make, without exception, every basket. Soon after meeting Scoby, Gunnar stuns the local children when he unintentionally exhibits his own, heretofore unknown talent for basketball, dunking the ball into the basket in a pickup game. His talent gains him respect within the Hillside community of youths. Ironically, this unusual talent causes him to stick out enables him to fit into the social scene. Around this time, Gunnar writes his first poem, "Negro Misappropriation of Greek Mythology or, I know Niggers That'll Kick Hercules's Ass" and spray paints the lines across the concrete wall surrounding Hillside. Later, instructed by Scoby, Gunnar changes his hairstyle and attire in an effort to further conform to Hillside society.

As the years pass, Gunnar becomes incredibly popular, both for his talent on the basketball court and for his emerging poetic prowess. However, he remains somewhat of an outcast in his clear lack of dancing talent and his unease with women. His friends, Scoby and feared gang-member and assumed murderer Psycho Loco, dub Gunnar's awkward antics on the dance floor "The White Boy Shuffle". Because of Gunnar's apparent inability to talk to women, Psycho Loco secretly takes it upon himself to order Gunnar a mail-order bride from Japan, using a service called "Hot Mamma-Sans of the Orient". Throughout high school, Gunnar continues to write poetry, much of which, we later learn, is published in magazines.

During his sixteenth summer, Gunnar aids in his friends' stealing a department store safe during the turmoil of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. We learn that Psycho Loco has planned to steal the safe for nine years in retribution for the department store's having moved a race-car set the young Psycho intended to steal on the day he was to steal it. As Gunnar and his friends attempt to load the safe into a car, Gunnar's father and other policemen arrive. Gunnar's father beats him with a nightstick, and Gunnar is hospitalized. When he is released from the hospital, he learns that his friends have been unable to open the safe. Gunnar turns the safe over, finding the combination on the bottom, and opens it. Gunnar refuses to take any of the money, gold, and precious stones inside. In the last two weeks of summer, Gunnar attends a program for the top 100 high school basketball talents in the country, of which Gunnar is number 100. From camp, he sends his friends and family several e-mails, which are documented in the novel. From these e-mails, we learn that both of Gunnar's sisters are pregnant and have moved in with their father. We also learn that Gunnar, despite his basketball talent, is not incredibly interested in the game itself. He is constantly frustrated by his roommates' insistence on constantly talking about the game. Gunnar notes that his roommates even use basketball terms to talk about women.

In return for his father not pressing charges against him and his friends for the safe incident, Gunnar agrees to attend an elite public high school in the San Fernando Valley. Gunnar travels an hour and a half to and from school on a bus. His return to a predominantly white atmosphere is an easy one, and Gunnar notes that he "meshed well" (153). However, he disdains the arrogance of several of the rich, white boys with whom his mother insists he spend time.