![]() So, I feel like that book was an important love letter to that place, and with The New Naturals it felt to me like it was more about an idea and the conceit of the utopia. Even if it’s not an autobiographical novel, it was still about Chicago and to a lesser extent Missouri, these places that were really influential in me becoming an adult. Because with Everywhere You Don’t Belong, I wanted to write about South Shore where I grew up. ![]() Sojourner and Bounce were my first two characters that I had in mind, particularly Bounce which is weird to think about now because he doesn’t appear in the book until about a third of the way through.īut in the conceit of The New Naturals, I wanted to write a bigger book. It allowed me to move around more, and that kind of lends itself to having the cast of characters I ended up having. I think just kind of in the basic storytelling, just having a book in close third-person as opposed to first I think allowed for more of that expansion. ![]() Where did you see these two books building upon themselves as you sat down to work on your latest? The New Naturals kind of expands the scope in many ways, including with your characters and settings. Your first novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong, felt to me so intimate in that it’s a coming-of-age story of a young boy growing up in this one neighborhood in Chicago. I spoke with Bump by phone about managing multiple interconnected storylines, the promise of and threats to utopia, and the role of collective action during moments of uncertainty. It’s a stunning achievement in imagining possibilities for a spent world. While The New Naturals in many ways is about personal and collective breaking points, Bump still finds hope for a better life even in the novel’s darkest places. When Rio and Sojourner lose their newborn child, their desire to find a place to start over evolves into a plan to build a new, underground society where everyone can feel loved and accepted. The New Naturals is truly a novel for our modern moment, depicting an unforgettable cast of characters that, for various reasons, are living in an all too familiar state of exhaustion. But even if home became a bittersweet memory, Bump always made clear that the love one finds there can last.īump’s latest release is a fascinating evolution of that premise. The young narrator of his debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong quickly became a classic voice in Chicago literature, echoing a sense of dazzling and at times unrealized optimism about his community, reminiscent of writers like Sandra Cisneros and Stuart Dybek. Gabriel Bump has always exuded hopefulness in his writing.
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