Mateo Askaripour: On Black Salesmen, Identity and Religion in Tech Start-Ups, and His Debut Novel "Black Buck"
Mateo Askaripour’s debut novel, Black Buck, is a searing satirical take on corporate culture. Darren Vender, a young Black man who lives in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy with mom, is content with his life: a girlfriend, Soraya, and a stable job as manager at a Manhattan Starbucks. As valedictorian at Bronx Science, people in Darren’s life tell him he could do much more. When one of his regulars, the CEO of tech start-up Sumwun, Rhett Daniels, is impressed by Darren’s ability to “reverse close” while attempting to sway Daniels’ to a different order, Darren is presented with the opportunity of a lifetime. At the insistence of his mother, Soraya, and others in the Bed-Stuy area, Darren accepts Daniels’ offer for an interview. Once a member of the elite sales team at Sumwun, Darren struggles to balance his life with the long work hours and after hours of drinking. After an employee in China is charged with murder, Darren’s life is sent into a free fall. Written as a self-help memoir, the book is meant to double as a manual for aspiring Black salesmen while telling a powerful story of identity and the sense of self. Askaripour’s bildungsroman contains a multitude of heart and irony that all comes together in this anti-capitalist satire about the Black experience in corporate America.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Mateo via email to discuss his life, identity and religion, and his debut novel, Black Buck.
The protagonist of your debut novel, Darren Vender, a 22-year-old underachiever working at a Starbucks in New York City, gets his big break when a regular customer, the CEO of a tech start-up, offers him a job. Where did you come up with the initial idea?
It’s funny, the initial idea was pretty different from what the book actually became. After hitting what felt like creative rock bottom in November 2018––I’d written two manuscripts that didn’t earn me an agent or a book deal––I reached what I can only call, “Fuck it mode.” I told myself that while getting an agent and a book deal were things I wanted, I had to focus more on writing a book that felt true––to myself, to those I wanted to serve, and to the reality of the country we live in––which meant facing themes of my own life that I was shying away from. It was then I had the idea of an elite group of Black salespeople who’d end up blowing up buildings and getting into all other kinds of mayhem. A couple months later, even though I didn’t know where it would go, the idea was refined, my goals became clearer, and my sense of purpose was cracking, snapping, and popping like a live wire.
I read in Publisher’s Weekly that you used to be the director of sales development at a start-up company when you were 24 years old. How much of the novel was inspired by your own life?
I get asked this question a lot and I still don’t know how to answer it. Even though my main character, Darren, and I are different in many ways––where we grew up, physical characteristics, education, and family––we’re similar in others. But this is true of myself and almost every other character in the novel. I had to examine parts of myself, and my own history, in order to bring them to life. And while parts of the book are more rooted in my personal reality––some of what transpires in the startup, for example; a couple interpersonal relationships, Darren’s unbridled ambition––the majority of the plot is made up. But I’m beginning to understand that the device of Black Buck being written as a memoir/sales manual by Darren Vender, which some people perceive as a stand-in for myself, has worked almost too well. What I will say, though, is that I have felt every single emotion my characters feel, which made the story both easier and more difficult to write.
In that same article, it seems that your path to write this novel was quite the journey. Do you mind talking about that briefly? What led you to write Black Buck? How long did it take to write?
It was a journey, indeed, and I am so grateful for it. Back when I began writing seriously, May 2016, I wanted to get on as quickly as possible, but I now know that would have been to my own detriment, and also not possible. I wasn’t good enough. I had so much more to learn, and I still do, but even more back then.
Still, I was fortunate to have worked in the industry I did and acquired a specific set of skills that made it so that I wasn’t going to stop, regardless of if it took me ten months or ten years, until I achieved my aims. So writing two books in the span of a year that didn’t go anywhere was tough, but I was able to bounce back with even more enthusiasm the third time because I truly felt like I was living into my purpose, which has always been my strongest driving force.
By the time I began writing Black Buck, I was living back at my parents’ house, in my childhood bedroom. Long gone were my bed, TV, and posters, and in their place was a small desk, couch, and hundreds of cookbooks my mom filled the room with, since she never thought I’d move back home. And even though I was in such a strange, solitary place in my life, I had the work of other artists to learn from and find solace in. These artists and their works served as reminders that the road for so many of us isn’t easy, that it can’t be, and that if you bet on yourself and commit, truly commit, to creating something true, you’ll be more likely to succeed.
So Black Buck was born out of necessity mixed with desperation mixed with a desire to create something that would both impress myself and help others. The first draft took about five months and was 168,000 (!) words. I began the book on January 8th, 2018, verbally accepted my agent’s offer on February 22nd, 2019, and sold the book on August 12th, 2019.
When we are introduced to Darren, he seems sure of himself and who he is. But when he becomes part of the elite sales team—and the only Black person in the company—Darren reinvents himself as Buck and sets out to empower young people of color. Yet throughout the novel, the protagonist is assigned different identities like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Sidney Poitier, and Dave Chappelle by various white people. What is the purpose of the protagonist’s fluid identity?
Regarding that last part, it’s important to point out that other people assign Darren those different identities––e.g. MLK, Malcolm X, Sidney Poitier, and Dave Chappelle. To the people who say, “Hey, has anyone ever said you look like XYZ?”, he does resemble these various Black men who look nothing alike. The purpose of that was to show, with some hilarity, something that happens often to Black people when they’re the only, or one of the few, Black people in a space populated by non-Black people.
But in terms of him assuming the identity of Buck after the name was given to him, it’s not so much that Darren is flipping back and forth between who he is in Bed-Stuy and who he is in Manhattan, but more so that he really is turning into someone else, and that other person is who and how he believes he needs to be in order to both survive and thrive in the hostile environment of Sumwun and sales.
Later on, we see him become someone else again, and that other person is who and how he believes he needs to be to empower other people of color and ultimately protect what they’ve built together.
That’s true. Later on, he does become someone else. The change in Darren/Buck as he struggles to understand who he is—or at the least feels he should become—is reassuring. Everyone has the capacity to change. And interestingly, the narrative structure of the novel is developed as a self-help/business memoir. How did you come to decide that this was how Darren/Buck’s story should be told?
It’s what felt most natural. I knew that I wanted the book to be as engaging as possible, but I also wanted it to serve as something that would directly help people, especially Black and brown people, gain a basic proficiency in sales so that if they wanted, they’d be able to walk into an interview for an entry-level sales role and have an edge.
The idea of breaking the fourth wall, via bolded notes to the reader set apart from preceding and succeeding paragraphs, came to me around the fourth draft of the novel. I had already written it as a memoir/sales manual, but I knew that if I were to address the reader and give them tips in such a straightforward manner, they’d more easily be able to see that this book is about more than telling them a story, it’s about giving them a handful of tools to better their lives and the lives of those they love.
Racial injustice and the wealth gap have a large role in this novel. Clyde and Rhett, the CEO of Sumwun, both white and privileged during their time at Sumwum, are the gatekeepers. And to pass through the gates, Darren becomes Buck and sells his soul, so to speak, to them. Was there ever a way in mind for Darren to achieve what he wanted without selling himself?
Hahaha. You really make Rhett and Clyde sound like the devil, I love it! I don’t know, I’m hesitant to agree with Darren having sold his soul––that sounds too dramatic and intentional for something that unfortunately happens every day: people entering unfamiliar environments and losing themselves in them.
When Darren first enters Sumwun, his goal is to succeed there in order to prove to himself and his mother that he can be more than a shift manager at Starbucks. So, no, Darren wouldn’t have been able to stay who he was and thrive at Sumwun. Sumwun is a place that prioritizes assimilation, and if you don’t do that, even unconsciously, it will be hell. And it was hell for Darren, until he decided to play their game, tough it out, take it until he made it, and all of those other ways of saying, “get lost in the sauce.”
But remembering the best parts of himself and integrating those with the skills he gained at Sumwun allowed him to change what it means to be a minority in the workplace, at least for a little bit. So the question that he asks the reader at the end, and which I ask you now, is: was it worth it?
Religion is consistently touched upon throughout the novel. Sumwum has various meeting rooms named after religious texts; Rhett often quotes New Testament scripture; many others in Darren/Buck’s life express a belief in God or faith. What led you to include these parallels and why?
Thank you for this question, you’re the first person to touch on it. There are so many ways to answer it. I grew up pretty religious––attending church one or two Sundays a month, praying every night, even going to a Christian camp one summer––and the Jamaican side of my family was and is devout. But I lost my faith over a series of years, and stopped praying while I was studying abroad in Florence, Italy, at the age of 18.
This is all to say that religion has played an important role in my life, as it does with so many others, and it felt organic to incorporate it into the book because it made sense to me that Ma, like my own mother, would be religious.
When it came to Rhett, I wanted him to recite Biblical verses and curse in the same breath because I’ve never seen someone do that before, and it was in line with the charismatic, semi-eccentric, and obsessed person he is. I also wanted him to be religious because religion is taboo in the world of startups, and I figured it would make him even more interesting to people who are familiar with that world and with the Steve Jobs-like CEOs who create and lead these manic organizations.
What is the most difficult part of your writing process?
It’s different now than it was when I was writing Black Buck. Today, I have a lot more eyes on me, and I have to work slightly harder to block them all out while creating. But with Black Buck, the hardest part was knowing what to cut and the act of cutting itself.
Remember when I said the first draft was 168,000 words? I liked a lot of it! But there were unnecessary sub-plots, some characters were getting more airtime than they should have, and the story needed to be more focused in order for it to do what I wanted it to do. With that said, I’ve realized that I’d rather have too much material than too little.
Who are the writers that most inspire you?
John A. Williams. Toni Morrison. Kiese Laymon. Philip Roth. Sam Greenlee. Chester Himes. Nafissa Thompson-Spires. Paul Beatty. Colson Whitehead. William Melvin Kelley. Kristen Hunter. Iceberg Slim. Imbolo Mbue. James Baldwin. Octavia Butler.
Do you have any advice to writers who are looking to write and/or publish a debut novel of their own?
If you’re going to write, write. Don’t pussyfoot around. Tell yourself you’re a writer, but be careful of who you tell you’re writing––skepticism, even just in the eyes, from someone you care about can be debilitating. Finish your work as quickly as possible. And don’t judge yourself while in the act of creation, do it after you’ve completed your first draft and only then. Finally, don’t ignore failure––understand why and how it happened, make adjustments, and keep going.
MATEO ASKARIPOUR’s work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. He was a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in Entrepreneur, Lit Hub, Catapult, The Rumpus, Medium, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.
About the Interviewer
Coty Poynter is the author of two poetry books. His most recent, Delirium: Collected Poems, was published by Bowen Press. His work has appeared in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Equinox, Grub Street, and Underwood Press. He lives in Baltimore with his partner, their cat Pudge, and a hodgepodge of plants.
