What to read next if you loved I Love Boosters.

Last weekend, Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters hit theaters, blowing a breath of fresh air into the American cinema. Riley, the funkmaster filmmaker behind 2018’s Sorry to Bother You, is best known for a highly gonzo, “socialist surrealist” aesthetic. And just like his first film, Boosters takes the prospect of scrambling to make a living in America to absurd extremes.

I caught the film this weekend and left all fizzy, with my imagination firing on all cylinders. And what better to do with a great vibe than keep it going?

Here are seven books that I Love Boosters brought to mind.

Paul Beatty, The Sellout

As my personal king Richard Brody observed in The New Yorker, I Love Boosters is concerned with both color and color. In its madcap way, the film explores how fashion is raced and subsequently appropriated. Riley’s irreverent handle on these subjects reminded me of Paul Beatty’s 2015 satire, an all-time fave.

Following BonBon, a Black man about to stand trial for re-introducing segregation to his “agrarian ghetto,” (i.e., small town outside Los Angeles) this novel also centers a witty huckster who refuses to play by society’s rules. If you like your social critique with a healthy side of insanity and plenty of laughs, pick this one up. (But don’t boost it.)

Kirstin Chen, Counterfeit

This intoxicating caper follows Ava, a fortunate daughter who breaks bad when she gets caught up in a counterfeit purse ring. An extremely fun and witty read, this novel checks several Boosters boxes: we’ve got con artistry, fashion lore, freckled business partnerships, and an incisive critique of American consumerism.

Camille Perri in The New York Times praised this novel for its “shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority.”

Percival Everett, Erasure

Christie Smith, the powerhouse designer villain played by Demi Moore, spends a fair bit of Boosters chiding the “low class urban b*tches” who she believes are tanking her products’ market value—even as they bring her work to the masses.

This paradox brought to mind Everett’s Erasure, a deep, brutal satire that considers the exploitation of Black genius (and Black trauma!) from both sides of the color line.

Dana Thomas, Fashionopolis

This high-octane expose following cloth from the factory floor to the catwalk comes from a seasoned journalist and slow fashion advocate. Writing for NPR, Lily Meyer called Fashionopolis a “clear-minded attack on the fashion industry’s rampant labor and environmental abuses.”

Written in 2019, the book also feels prescient about the fast fashion landscape that Riley’s film lampoons. A good and bracing read to put next to Boosters—and while we’re at it, The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Bonus rec: Thomas is also the author of one of my favorite industrial tell-alls, Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Consider that one first if you’re Team Christie Smith.

Fran Ross, Oreo

I consider proselytizing about Fran Ross one of my life callings. This extremely funny novel, criminally neglected after its release, follows Christine, an eccentric genius who’s on a quest to find her long lost father.

I thought of this for Boosters fans because Oreo is, in some respects, also an overstuffed suitcase. The novel is made of math equations, lengthy jokes, digressions in Yiddish, and a whole lot of language play. Its gonzo spirit, racial irreverence, and formal invention reminded me of Riley.

Alex Gilvarry, From the Memoirs of a Non-­Enemy Combatant

In this bright, voice-driven debut from 2012, we find Nietzsche and Coco Chanel colliding in the footnotes. This book follows an upstart fashion designer who’s been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Boy Hernandez is prepping for trial, and in the act reflecting on the American dream that has turned nightmarish. Here, consumerism, the fashion industry, and the cruel state meet a scrappy protagonist. Very Boosters coded.

It should be especially interesting to revisit this book at a moment when both the prison industrial complex and anti-immigrant sentiment have reached absurd extremes. Maybe this one’s ripe for a Riley screen treatment?

Chester Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem

And finally, let’s end with a classic. This Harlem-based heist likewise includes overt political overtones. We begin at a Back-to-Africa rally that is hijacked by masked thieves, then follow the community’s attempt to get that collection plate back. Himes’ novels, like Riley’s films, also run on a bench of eccentric weirdos. Flim-flam men and demonic detectives to the front.

If you love the boosting parts of Boosters best, start here.  And I note the other titles on this great list. (Don’t sleep on P.G. Wodehouse, caper fans!)

This week, may your mind be blown by bright colors and intricate contradictions. Either at the movies, or in the stacks.