Sag Harbor

2009FictionAfrican American teenage boysAdolescenceLarge type booksComing of age

4.0

Open Library

About this book

The warm, funny, and supremely original new novel from one of the most acclaimed writers in AmericaThe year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school--when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria--his social doom is sealed for the next four years. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own. Because their parents come out only on weekends, he and his friends are left to their own devices for three glorious months. And although he's just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates the rest of the year, he thinks that maybe this summer things will be different. If all goes according to plan, that is. There will be trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through, and state-of-the-art profanity to master. He will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy of '85, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, with a little luck, things will turn out differently this summer.In this deeply affectionate and fiercely funny coming-of-age novel, Whitehead--using the perpetual mortification of teenage ex…

Themes & subjects

FictionAfrican American teenage boysAdolescenceLarge type booksComing of agePeer pressure

First published 2009

Setting

Sag Harbor (N.Y.)

About the author

Colson Whitehead

6 Nov 1969

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead (born November 6, 1969) is an American novelist. His works include his 1999 debut *The Intuitionist*; *The Underground Railroad* (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and *The Nickel Boys*, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship. **Source**: [Colson Whitehead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead) on Wikipedia.