Gabriel Bump - "Everywhere You Don't Belong" - Audrey Petty
Monday, February 17, 2020 - 6:00pm - 7:00pm
“This book is astonishing. You’ll be smiling even as your heart is breaking, and you’ll tip willingly into this world Bump offers you, because what appears again and again are spectacular beams of light also called love, also called hope, also called family. Gabriel Bump has established himself as a stunning talent to be reckoned with.” —Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King
Gabriel Bump discusses Everywhere You Don't Belong. He will be joined in conversation by Audrey Petty. Q&A and signing will follow the event.
Presented in partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC)
At the Co-op
About the book: In this powerful, edgy, and funny debut novel about making right and wrong choices, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable and lovable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude is a young black man in search of a place where he can fit; 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. After a riot consumes his neighborhood, Claude decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new life and identity. But as he discovers, there’s no escaping the people and places that made him. Written in a fierce and original voice attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
About the author: Gabriel Bump grew up in South Shore, Chicago. His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in Slam magazine, the Huffington Post, Springhouse Journal, and elsewhere. He was awarded the 2016 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award for Fiction. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. He lives in Buffalo, New York.
About the interlocutor: Audrey Petty is a native South Sider. She is editor of High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing (McSweeney’s/Voice of Witness) and co-editor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom (Haymarket Press). Her poetry and prose have been featured in such publications as Callaloo, the Best Food Writing anthology, Oxford American, and Columbia Review. Her latest essay, “Between the Lake and Emmett Till Road,” was recently published in The Chicago Neighborhood Guide (Belt Press).
Event Location:
The Seminary Co-op
5751 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago, IL
60637
See map: Google Maps
Related Titles
Hardcover | $25.95 | 9781616208790
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 "A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it's also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump's meditation on belonging and not belonging,...