Green : a novel / Sam Graham-Felsen.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780399591143
- ISBN: 0399591141
- Physical Description: 301 pages ; 23 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Random House, [2018]
Content descriptions
Summary, etc.: | Boston, 1992. David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won't even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Unless he tests into the city's best public high school--which, if practice tests are any indication, isn't likely--he'll be friendless for the foreseeable future. Nobody's more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar's a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave's own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave's assumptions about black culture: He's nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics obsessive whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird. Before long, Mar's coming over to Dave's house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar's. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he's been given--and that Mar has not.--Provided by Publisher. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Interracial friendship > Massachusetts > Boston > Fiction. Middle school boys > Fiction. Boston (Mass.) > History > 20th century > Fiction. |
Genre: | Bildungsromans. Coming of age fiction. |
Available copies
- 18 of 18 copies available at Bibliomation.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 18 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Beekley Community Library - New Hartford | F GRAHAM-FELSEN S (Text) | 32544072484560 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Bolton High School | FIC GRA (Text) | 34062141574418 | Fiction | Available | - |
C.H. Booth Library - Newtown | FIC GRAHAM-FELSEN (Text) | 34014140342230 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Edith Wheeler Memorial Library - Monroe | FIC GRAHAM-FELSEN,S (Text) | 34026141100599 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Kent Memorial Library - Suffield | FICTION GRAHAM-FELSEN (Text) | 32518138291391 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Killingly Library | F Gra (Text) | 34040141229126 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Mark Twain Library Association - Redding | YA Gra (Text) | 33620139896886 | Teen Fiction | Available | - |
Milford Public Library | GRAHAM-FELSEN Sam (Text) | 34013141960677 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Norfolk Library | FIC GRA (Text) | 36058010252464 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Oliver Wolcott Library - Litchfield | FIC GRAHAM-FELSEN, S (Text) | 36123132902048 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
Electronic resources
BookList Review
Green : A Novel
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
*Starred Review* The year is 1992, the place is Boston, and 12-year-old Dave Greenfeld (Green) is one of only two white boys in his sixth-grade class at Martin Luther King Middle School. It's not easy being Green when you're an outsider, an easy target for verbal (and the threat of physical) abuse. Essentially abandoned by the other white boy, once his friend, Dave is left alone until he meets Marlon, who is black, and the two strike up a tentative friendship that soon blossoms. Dave poignantly thinks that Marlon isn't just his best friend; he's his first. Up until now I had no idea just how lonely I'd been. Graham-Felsen's fine first novel is clearly about race relations at a specific time in American history, and, perhaps accordingly, the two boys' interracial friendship is not always an easy one: Dave is diffident to a fault and has a habit of betraying his friend. Worse is the specter of what Dave calls the Force i.e., racial prejudice. Will it eventually shatter the two boys' friendship? Dave tells his story in his own idiosyncratic, vaguely streetwise voice, with hip-hop overtones that perfectly capture the mood and tone of the story. He and Marlon are wonderful characters, fully realized and multidimensional, and Graham-Felsen has done a superb job of creating their environment. Voice, mood, tone, character, and setting all contribute to the making of a memorable first novel.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Green : A Novel
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A white boy in a majority-black Boston middle school gets an education on race and friendship.This debut novel is set in 1992 and narrated by David Greenfeld, aka Green, the son of middle-class parents who send him to a public middle school in the name of progressive politics. "They believe in public schools,' even when they're mad ghetto," he explains early, deploying the hip-hop slang that distinguishes this otherwise fairly conventional coming-of-age story. Bullying? Check: his whiteness makes him a target, and he's quickly stripped of the expensive, gaudy outfit he buys to earn some street bona fides. Cross-cultural friendship? Check: Green bonds with Marlon "Mar" Wellings, a black classmate from the nearby projects, over Celtics basketball and a mutual interest in passing the entrance exam to Boston Latin high school. Budding self-awareness? Check: Green's growing awareness of Marlon's background is matched by his own enlightenment in matters both primal (sex) and intellectual (his Jewish background). Graham-Felsen, who has a similar background to Green's, writes sensitively about the multiple ways racism manifests in this milieu: Green and Mar's snow-shoveling hustle only succeeds when Mar isn't visible to white clients, and Green is oblivious to how Marlon is treated as suspect at a Harvard alumni gathering. Throughout, Celtics star Larry Bird serves as Green's spirit animal and symbol for the narrative where whiteness represents difference, and Graham-Felsen avoids the biggest danger by making sure Green's language never feels forced. Green's delivery is often witty ("What do white girls like to talk about? The Gap? Horses?"). But the author's focus on Green's quotidian concerns about school and girls limits attention on Marlon, who has the more dramatic story, and other threads concerning religion, Green's quirky brother, and his family's connection to the Holocaust feel extraneous and unfinished.A well-turned if familiar race-themed bildungsroman. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly Review
Green : A Novel
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From the chief blogger of Barack Obama's first presidential campaign comes a provocative debut that wrestles with matters of race, white privilege, and institutional prejudice head-on. The subtly humorous, surprisingly touching coming-of-age narrative is told from the perspective of Dave, one of the only white students at King, a predominantly black and Latino public middle school in Boston. At the start of sixth grade in 1992, he befriends Marlon, a smart black student from the nearby housing projects with a passion for the Celtics and a gorgeous singing voice. The pals wade through typical middle school drama together-flirting with "shorties," getting bullied by tougher classmates, handling academic stress. Their friendship survives most of the upheaval, until competition over a girl and Dave's ease at getting ahead get in the way. The significance of the boys' backgrounds is obvious-Dave might be an outlier at school, but he and his Harvard-educated hippie parents are more set up in life than most in his gentrifying neighborhood. Where Graham-Felsen shines is in his depiction of the pressures put on Marlon to rise above his circumstances and to cope with his mother's mental illness. The novel is also a memorable and moving portrayal of a complicated but deep friendship that just might survive the weight placed on it. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Green : A Novel
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
DEBUT As a member of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign staff, Graham-Felsen helped articulate Obama's message of empathy and cooperative change across social media outlets. Here, in his debut novel, he weaves those themes into a story about two friends navigating adolescence across the racial divide. Nicknamed Green, Dave is one of the few white kids attending Martin Luther King Middle School in Boston. His life is occupied with a daily struggle to fit in, which extends from his clothing to his demeanor. Through a shared admiration for Larry Bird and the Celtics, a black classmate named Marlon becomes one of Dave's only friends and allies. Together, they manage the awkwardness of middle school under constant pressure to succeed from parents, teachers, and the larger community. As Marlon and Dave form their own individual identities, however, their similarities slowly become eclipsed by their differences, from family backgrounds to life goals. VERDICT Based on Graham-Felsen's childhood in Boston in the 1990s, this work poignantly captures the tumultuous feelings of adolescence against the historical backdrop of a racially segregated city and country. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17; "Editors' Fall Picks," p. 35.]-Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Times Review
Green : A Novel
New York Times
August 30, 2019
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company
"GREEN," THE DEBUT NOVEL from Sam Graham-Felsen, who was chief blogger for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, chronicles the middle school travails of an anomalous variety of minority student. "I am the white boy at the Martin Luther King Middle," is how 12-year-old David Alexander Greenfeld, nicknamed Green, introduces himself in the novel's opening line. Martin Luther King Middle is a Boston public school - "mad ghetto," in Green's estimation - where his progressive parents have sent him for sixth grade. He's not the only white boy in the school, but the other one - his friend Kev, who's got lip scruff and spiky black hair along with prowess on the basketball court - often passes for Puerto Rican. There's no mistaking Green, though: not with his blue eyes and blond curls and constantly flushed cheeks, not with his monogrammed L. L. Bean backpack, not with his weakness for blurting the word "awesome" ("a Caucasian catastrophe," he notes). Almost all 12-year-olds are confused about who and what they are, but for David Greenfeld, at school, one conspicuous facet of his identity defines him: not his Green-ness, but his whiteness. Hewing to the classic coming-of-agenovel formula, "Green's" Green experiences a variety of awakenings - sexual, religious, familial, moral and not surprisingly racial - during the course of his sixth-grade school year (1992-93), all of which get relayed in first-person, presenttense, slanged-up narration. The alarm clock for some of these awakenings is the friendship Green strikes with Marlon Wellings, a pious, studious black classmate who lives near Green in the Robert Gould Shaw Homes, a.k.a. "the projects." Marlon, unlike Green, is mostly immune to social tensions, sitting by himself at lunchtime studying for the entrance exam to Boston Latin, the city's elite public school, where Green also aims to transfer. Green's first impression is that Marlon "looks pretty soft," and thus approachable: "creased khakis, pilled-up flannel, boxy black shoes and a short, unkempt flattop, more like a clumpy cloud." He has a gap in his front teeth, just as Green does, but the similarities don't end there. The bond they form is based partly upon a clandestine love for the Boston Celtics - "no one openly admits they feel the Celtics anymore," Green says - and partly upon their shared desire for an upward move to Boston Latin. At Martin Luther King Middle they're outsiders, and both of them are desperate to get even farther outside. The similarities do, however, bear some obvious endpoints. Green's Birkenstockshod parents went to Harvard before embarking on a life of bobo activism ("Pops gives mad loot to Greenpeace"); Marlon's father is somewhere down South while his grandmother cares for him along with his mentally ill mother. Green and his 8-yearold brother, Benno, spend summers helping their parents tend a community garden plot; Marlon eats asparagus for the first time at Green's house and the resultant urine smell triggers a cancer panic. Green is a secular Jew, confounded by what that even means, while Marlon sings in the choir in a storefront church near the Roxbury border. Green's parents, if they would relax their principles, could conceivably send him to a safer private school (brother Benno, who recently stopped speaking, attends one such school "for sensitive kids"); Marlon's grandmother is absent that option. And Marlon is black, while Green, glaringly, is white. This dynamic - the white boy adrift in the urban and predominantly black school, the fraught cross-racial friendship that blooms there - isn't new to fiction. Jonathan Lethem probed it, with exquisite grace, in his 2003 novel "The Fortress of Solitude." (A line from Lethem's novel, in fact, could serve as a 10-word summary of Green: "A white boy in sixth grade, squirming in the glare.") Graham-Felsen isn't reaching for the same lofty heights as Lethem did (few novelists dare to), but he is reaching in the same general direction: toward the terribly thorny beauty at the heart of cross-racial friendships, which constitutes, per Leslie Fiedler and others, one of our essential American stories. These thorns keep getting denser and sharper as "Green" progresses, as when Green discovers that the pair's snow shoveling business is successful only when he approaches potential customers without Marlon in sight. What we call racism Green apprehends as "the force": its energies everywhere, "working on everyone," himself included. When Green copies a couple of answers from Marlon during the fated entrance exam, the white proctor takes notice but lets it slide. "A sickening mix of relief and shame sweeps over me," says Green. "Mar knows it and I do, too: I've been saved by the force." moments like these - rendered subtly, without poster-size messaging - are when "Green" is at its most prickly and compelling. Scenes of innocence - Green and Marlon clowning in homemade prowrestler costumes, or watching VHS tapes of Larry Bird-era Celtics games from inside a living room fort made of blankets and chairs - serve as their delicately calibrated counterbalances, affecting in their sweetness but credible in their lack of saccharine. Graham-Felsen lets boys be boys: messy-brained, impulsive, goatish, selfcentered, outwardly gutsy but often inwardly terrified. The voice with which Graham-Felsen equips Green, overseasoned with hip-hop slang, is the epitome of this. At first blush it suggests Holden Caulfield as translated by Vanilla Ice ("If I'm gonna make another attempt to kick it to her, I'm gonna need a new Machine, and for that I'm gonna need to fatten my muenster stack, fast"). Yet as the novel advances, and this street stud pose starts splintering, the voice itself gathers a kind of dorky poignancy, the reader sensing an unseen wobble upon Green's stiff, pale lip. Is it linguistic blackface, with all that implies, or a 12-year-old's guileless attempt to cobble together a voice of his own from what's nearest at hand? "I wish I had what he has," Green says of Marlon at one point. He's talking about religion, but it could be identity or maybe identity's midwife, community. "All I came up with was confusion." Yet this reader found himself wishing for something of Marlon's, too: his awakenings, his perspective, his inner voice, his fullness on the page. As Lethem wrote in "The Fortress of Solitude": "The white kid has one set of feelings, the black kid another." That we aren't privy to those feelings owes less to malpractice than to the inherent limitations of Graham-Felsen telling this story through Green's blue eyes. Marlon only exists within Green's purview, which means that "Green" - and by extension the reader - sees only a fraction of the whole. "We match up in a million soft little ways - why can't we just be boys again?" Green laments near the end, when the friendship has run aground. "But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we were meant to be shards from the start. Not just me and Mar - everyone. Look around.... The force is everywhere, prying us apart." There's more hopefulness than this by the final pages, but it's a longshot hope, a coin into a fountain. He and Marlon match up in a million ways save one, but that one, in America then as now, seems cursed to outweigh all the others. Jonathan miles is the author of the novels "Dear American Airlines" and "Want Not." His latest novel, "Anatomy of a Miracle," will be published in March.