Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump

Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump

Published by Algonquin Books ISBN 978164370859

Trade paperback, $15.95, 272 pages

Gabriel Bump dedicates his thought-provoking debut novel Everywhere You Don't Belong to his Grandma and young Black men like Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Travon Martin, among others. 

Set in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, teenage Claude lives with Grandma and her friend Paul. Grandma participated in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Paul is gay and unlucky in love. Grandma gets Claude into a Catholic school on the other side of the tracks, but Claude is bullied at school because he is "bad at sports, no jokes, no rich parents, no excellent homework to steal and copy."

A few months into his tenure at Catholic school, his Grandma and the nuns had a disagreement about sexual abstinence (Grandma is against it), and Claude and Catholic school part ways. Grandma is quite a character, but she loves Claude.

Basketball was everything in Chicago at this time- the Bulls had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman, who were all on team that won multiple championships. Claude wasn't any good at basketball, but his best friend Jonah was a superstar. When Claude was badly beat up by Jonah's rival, Jonah's parents move him away, and Claude is left alone.

The South Side was also home to the Redbelters, who Grandma says thinks they are Black Panthers, but they recruit kids to sell drugs for them. When Claude and his friends are caught in the middle of a deadly riot between cops and the Redbelters, the neighborhood is being torn apart live on the nightly news.

Claude wants to escape and so he goes to college in Missouri to study journalism. His hopes of being his own person is hindered by his fellow students and teachers who once again want to define him by his race. When a young woman from home tracks him down, he has to decide where his future lies.

Everywhere You Don't Belong is a worthy addition to the best coming-of-age novels, from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to The Catcher in the Rye to more current ones like Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give. Bump creates a character in Claude who comes alive on the page. Good authors put us in the shoes and minds of their characters, and Bump does that with great empathy and a little humor (Grandma and Paul provide that). I highly recommend Everywhere You Don't Belong, and I'm not alone. The New York Times chose it as one of their 100 Notable Books of 2020.

Thansk for Algonquin Books for putting me on Gabriel Bump's tour.