Cover of They Come in All Colors
Read Time: ~5.6 hr

They Come in All Colors

by Malcolm Hansen (2018)

About this book

"The Secret Life of Bees meets Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle in this bold debut novel, set between the deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early 70s, following a biracial teenage boy whose new life in a big city is disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point. It's 1969 when fifteen-year-old Huey Fairchild begins his first day at Claremont Prep, one of New York City's most prestigious boys' schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey's white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River. But forgetting his past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other non-white person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. And after a quick slip of his temper, Huey finds himself on academic probation and facing legal charges. With his promising academic career in limbo, Huey begins examining his current predicament at Claremont through the lens of his childhood memories of growing up in Akersburg during the Civil Rights Movement. "The Secret Life of Bees meets Paul Beatty in this bold debut novel, set between the Deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early 70s, about a biracial teenage boy whose new life in a big city is disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point"--

Setting / LocationUnited States / Global
Story EraContemporary
Protagonist / CoreNotable Figure / Community

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Ibram X. Kendi

Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.

They Come in All Colors by Malcolm Hansen | Synopsis, Reviews & Preview | Literally Just Books