Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump

He cries when he leaves Chicago for college in Missouri and is working on a journalism project whose very assignment feels racist. He cries over the riots that ensue and the gangs and more people killed. So relevant and reflective of the real life situations we see on the news with young black men and boys being killed or abused not because they are doing something wrong, but because of the racism that makes police believe they are doing something wrong. Claude cries a lot over being left by his parents, over the death of black teenager, dead in the street, killed by a cop while the boy was entering a home to feed the cats for the people on vacation. Claude, abandoned at 5 by his parents is raised by an unconventional, activist grandmother who loves him. I loved Claude McKay Love, the main character in this coming of age story of a young black man, growing up on the South side of Chicago. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.

But as he discovers, he cannot there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life.

Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant-he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.Ĭlaude just wants a place where he can fit.

In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love.

Everywhere You Don't Belong by Gabriel Bump