I recently finished reading Everywhere You Don’t Belong, the debut novel by Gabriel Bump. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and winner of the Ernest Gaines Award. It’s a dark but funny coming-of-age novel about growing up on the South Shore of Chicago. I enjoyed it and I recommend it to everyone.
It’s about a young boy, Claude McKay Love, growing up on the South Shore of Chicago as he is abandoned by his parents and left to be raised by his grandma and her friend, Paul. While you might think that this book would sink into pathos, Bump saves it by not dwelling on it and moving on to the next adventure, usually with a quip of sorts as when Grandma witnesses a fistfight between her son-in-law and another man; “That’s enough culture for one day.”
The book moves fast – skipping time and with short, sharp paragraphs. Suddenly he is in high school getting beaten up so that it lands him in the hospital. A local gang called the ‘Redbelters’ sells drugs and guns to local youth and instigates riots in which ‘civilians’ are caught between the gang and the equally bloody-minded police.
There’s a love angle. Claude encounters pig-tailed Janice in elementary school and we follow them through high school and beyond. Claude has a hard time with girls. The first time Janice calls him ‘cute’ “I choked on nothing, felt my heart trip a few times. … I wanted to call her beautiful,” Claude says. Instead, “I stammered into her face, spit some, choked on nothing, coughed, and spit some more.” Claude never gets any smoother, and he’s all the more charming for it.
The book is also social commentary, but it’s woven into the narrative and is never preachy or self-righteous. Bump writes on belonging and not belonging. He leaves Chicago to go to college but discovers that he doesn’t really fit in there either. Writing for the school newspaper, he’s asked to write articles about the black experience or black history or culture as though the only thing people can see about him is his blackness. But he finds love is a way home.
It’s well-written and quite funny at times. It’s a fast read and Bump is a good writer that I’m sure we’re going to hear more from. Give it a try!!
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