Gabriel Bump

Photo by Jeremy Handrup

Today on The PEN Pod, we spoke with author Gabriel Bump, who grew up in South Shore, Chicago. Chicago also happens to be the place where his debut novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, takes place. His work has appeared across numerous literary publications, and he was awarded the 2016 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award for Fiction. A resident of Buffalo, New York, he currently has a second novel in the works. We spoke with Gabriel about the role of writers in battling social ills and how his book’s themes of Black identity and survival are relevant in our current moment.

This book is a coming-of-age story about Chicago, but it’s a bit deeper than that. I’m wondering how you describe the protagonist, Claude McKay Love?
 I usually start by describing him as just an average kid. He’s not exceptionally smart or athletically talented. I wanted to portray what it’s like to be an unexceptional Black kid, growing up in the world and trying to figure out where you fit.

And yet, it’s an exceptional story. It blossoms into this much larger narrative and reckons with big ideas: activism, social change, Black identity. How do you think audiences are going to read this book right now, amid all of the crises that we’re confronting?
 To tie into the first question, Claude is unexceptional in the traditional ways that society might value. But I think he is an exceptional kid in that he’s exceptionally kind. He’s capable of exceptional empathy. What I hope that we can gain from this moment and the Black Lives Matter movement in general is that all Black lives matter. Like George Floyd, his life mattered. These people that are being murdered by police, it doesn’t matter if they have college degrees or high social standing. Every Black life matters. So I hope that that’s something that comes out of this discussion.

“What I hope that we can gain from this moment and the Black Lives Matter movement in general is that all Black lives matter. Like George Floyd, his life mattered. These people that are being murdered by police, it doesn’t matter if they have college degrees or high social standing. Every Black life matters.”

What I would hope readers would see in this book, in Claude’s journey, is that there are plenty of kids like Claude that are just trying to live their lives—fall in love, go to school, not do their homework. That existence is difficult in America for a lot of young Black teens, a lot of young Black men and women who are just trying to live their lives but are under constant threat.

There’s an important section in the book where Claude’s neighborhood, South Shore, erupts in a riot after the murder of a young Black teen. And what I found while writing that section is that I wanted to convey that when the riot erupts, Claude is just looking for his loved ones. He’s just trying to go home and just trying to live his life. And so, I think what I would hope people get out of his story is that Black people just want to live their lives. We don’t want to constantly be thinking about this.

How much of your Chicago is in this book?
 The neighborhood in the book is the neighborhood in which I grew up. I grew up on Euclid Avenue, Claude grew up on Euclid Avenue. In terms of the events of our lives, Claude lives a different life than me. But in terms of the setting, and in terms of the emotional tenor, a lot of it is personal. In the second half of the book, Claude goes off to college in Missouri. And I think that Claude’s experience being away from home and being in this foreign place where he feels he doesn’t really fit in—those are emotional experiences that I went through when I left Chicago for the first time.

“A lot of the themes that I talked about in this essay I wrote two months ago are themes that I would have written about now. The sensation of being isolated in the world. Feeling like the world doesn’t want you outside. One of the common refrains in some of these protests is that racism is a pandemic. I think for Black people, there’s always this sense of ‘Oh, I can’t go here. I can’t go there. I have to just kind of stay in my home.’”

It’s interesting to read those sections about drawing away from home and alienation in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown. Do you think about those themes differently now, in this moment of social distancing?
 It’s pretty interesting because I wrote a personal essay for LitHub a couple of months ago, talking about being on a book tour and the experience of being out in the world, going through your past lives, going back to places where you have unhappy experiences—and then suddenly, being locked in at home. I’ve been thinking about writing something about this moment. I think a lot of Black writers are like, “How do we process this?”

It was so strange because I realized that a lot of the themes that I talked about in this essay I wrote two months ago are themes that I would have written about now. The sensation of being isolated in the world. Feeling like the world doesn’t want you outside. One of the common refrains in some of these protests is that racism is a pandemic. I think for Black people, there’s always this sense of “Oh, I can’t go here. I can’t go there. I have to just kind of stay in my home.” And so, I think that dynamic is pretty fascinating.

“In this moment, I think there are Black writers that are doing tremendous work witnessing and transcribing what they see around them. . . Just understand that the work is constant. My book deals almost specifically with some of the themes that are playing out in front of us right now, and I started writing this book five years ago.”

You mentioned Black writers especially reckoning with this current moment. What do you think is the role writers play in navigating these twin pandemics—COVID-19 and the pandemic of anti-Black violence—that we’re coming to a reckoning with now?
 I think that Black writers are always doing this work. They’re constantly writing about violence and systemic racism. So I do think that it’s a positive thing—like what we saw a couple of weeks ago, where The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list was all of these books that had been written in the past that people are suddenly buying. So I think that that work is always happening.

In this moment, I think there are Black writers that are doing tremendous work witnessing and transcribing what they see around them. I’m thinking mainly of Bryan Washington and Danez Smith, who both wrote beautiful pieces on the subject. I think those will last throughout history when we look back at this moment. Just understand that the work is constant. My book deals almost specifically with some of the themes that are playing out in front of us right now, and I started writing this book five years ago.

What are you reading right now?
 I’m reading “boring” history books right now—maybe boring for other people, but for me, these are my guilty pleasures. I’m reading Frontiers by Noel Mostert about the history of South Africa and colonial relationships with tribes. I just started reading The Legacy of Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s First Black Indian President, by Theodore G. Vincent. Guerrero is someone that I didn’t know anything about until I picked up this book and started reading it. I wish that we would learn about him in school—he’s a really interesting person.

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