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🌟 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
📖 Genre: Satirical Fiction
#️⃣ 416 pages
✍�� Author: Mateo Askaripour
🎧 Audio book
📚 Read if: you like satirical novels with scathing social commentary; Memoir style fiction

This book may seem outrageous and in fact it is. Mateo Askaripour’s narrator Darren (aka Buck) tells us this from the start. Valedictorian of his class at the Bronx School of Science, Darren has become comfortable in his role as shift supervisor at his local Starbucks. He lives with his Mom in Bed-Stuy and is in love with his longterm girlfriend. In short, he is content. Then suddenly he’s given an opportunity to join a hot new tech start up called Sumwun as an elite salesman, and everything changes.

As his rise in the corporate world comes at great personal cost, Darren slowly begins to transition from tech bro to “Sensei Buck�� forming a program called “Happy Campers�� designed to help minorities in the white dominated sales force.

Askaripour’s debut novel is a brilliant exploration of systemic racism in corporate America. He illustrates white fragility with the juxtaposition of his “Happy Campers��, a group seeking to better themselves and develop the sales skills needed to not only enter but succeed in corporate America, to WUSS (White United Society of Sales People), created as pushback to a group focusing solely on minority success. It lays bear how many more hurdles minorities face in the corporate world simply because they are not whire.

The author also does a great job portraying just how absurd corporate America and the techy start up industry is as well as the extremely toxic competitive nature these companies push. The hell week suffered by all new employees felt more like fraternity hazing than a professional orientation.

I listened to this book on audio and as such, need to give a huge shoutout to the audiobook narrator Zeno Robinson who does an amazing job telling this powerful story. I think this may be the best audiobook I’ve listened to and will be on the lookout for any other books narrated by him.