Best Books of May: Colson Whitehead's "Sag Harbor"

It seems fitting on this sunny Seattle Friday to kick off our Best of the Month picks for May with our spotlight title, Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, a soulful, celebratory, and painfully funny novel that chronicles those lazy, sun-soaked days sandwiched between Memorial Day and
Labor Day. I read an early copy of Sag Harbor months ago and have been counting down the days to publication, waiting to go all in with my pick, my favorite novel since Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

The year is 1985 and 15-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black
students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to
spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother
Reggie in an enclave of Long Island’s Sag Harbor, the summer home to
many African American urban professionals. Benji’s a Converse-wearing,
Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star
Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo (rather than the
double-crossing Lando Calrissian).

Sag Harbor is a coming-of-age novel whose plot side-steps
life-changing events writ large. The book’s leisurely eight chapters
mostly concern Benji’s first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun
battles, slinging insults (largely unprintable “grammatical
acrobatics”) with his friends, and working his first summer job. And
Whitehead crafts a wonderful set piece describing Benji’s days at Jonni
Waffle Ice Cream, where he is shrouded in “waffle musk” and a dirty
T-shirt that’s “soiled, covered with batter and befudged from a sundae
mishap.”

Whitehead pushes his love of pop culture into hyper-drive. Nearly every
page is swimming with references to the 1980s–from New Coke and The
Cosby Show to late nights trying to decipher flickering glimpses of
naked women on scrambled Cinemax. And music courses through the book,
capturing that period when early hip hop mixed with New Wave. Lisa Lisa
and U.T.F.O make a memorable cameo at Jonni Waffle, and McFadden &
Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”–heard throughout the book in
passing cars and boom boxes–gets tagged as “the black national
anthem.”

Whitehead was kind enough to share with us an exclusive Sag Harbor playlist: Selected Cuts 1982-1985, With Liner Notes–a lineup of nine essential tracks of the early MTV era, including highlights from The Smiths, Run DMC, Bauhaus, and Doug E Fresh and Slick Rick.

And don’t just take my word on the book–check out Whitehead’s fellow Brooklyn bard Jonathan Lethem’s exclusive guest review of Sag Harbor (likely the only time in my life my byline will get top billing over Jonathan Lethem).


• Read Jonathan Lethem’s Guest Review



• Read the first chapter



• Watch a video of Colson Whitehead talking about Sag Harbor



• Check out Colson Whitehead’s exclusive Sag Harbor playlist





–BTP