SAG HARBOR by Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s newest “novel” is not strictly a novel at all. A book that he himself refers to as his “Autobiographical Fourth Novel,” it features a family that resembles his own—middle-class, upwardly mobile, and well-educated—a New York City-based family that spends summers at their vacation home in Sag Harbor, on Long island, “in the heart of the Hamptons.” Sag Harbor in 1985, the time frame of the action, has a large African-American summer community which owns compact homes on the beach, and a white summer community which lives uphill, with larger homes and panoramic views. For Benji, the fifteen-year-old main character, “There was summer, and then there was the rest of the year…It didn’t matter what went on during the rest of the year. Sag Harbor was outside the rules.”
May 23, 2009
Tags: 1980s, African-American, Doubleday, Summer Posted in: 20th Century, African-American, Coming-of-Age, NE & New York 
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