“If that place actually exists - if there is any place - is kind of questioned in the book.”īump said he finished writing the riot scene well before the fatal shooting of Harith Augustus in 2018 by Chicago Police officer Dillan Halley. “There’s a traumatic experience that happens, and he just decides, ‘Maybe this isn’t the place for me maybe I should go see if some place else can be,'” Bump said. It brings to the fore a central theme in the book: Claude’s constant desire to belong. The turning point of the story is a riot that engulfs South Shore after a neighbor boy is killed by police. “He’s expected to speak for his entire race to be this voice and be this standard that he is not necessarily up for,” Bump said. In college, he faces pressures likely to resonate with any person of color at a predominantly-white institution. The back half of the book sees Claude leave the neighborhood behind to study journalism in Missouri. “It was important to get in the mind of that person and see how these exceptional qualities can show themselves in non-traditional ways.” “Claude isn’t a person you hear from a lot in society - he’s a quiet, anxious kid prone to depression,” Bump said.
The first half of the story follows Claude as he attempts to “do normal kid things when society and family is pressuring him to be something else - to be extraordinary,” Bump said.
After his parents abandon him at age five, he moves in with his grandmother and her friend Paul, who live in Jackson Park Highlands. “Everywhere You Don’t Belong” is fictional protagonist Claude McKay Love’s coming-of-age story.
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