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They Come in All Colors
2019 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association
Malcolm Hansen arrives on the scene as a bold new literary voice with his stunning debut novel. Alternating between the Deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early '70s, They Come in All Colors follows a biracial teenage boy who finds his new life in the big city disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point.
It's 1968 when fourteen-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City’s most prestigious boys’ schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey’s white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River.
But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself on academic probation and facing legal charges. With his promising school career in limbo, he begins examining his current predicament at Claremont through the lens of his childhood memories of growing up in Akersburg during the Civil Rights Movement—and the chilling moments leading up to his and his mother's flight north.
With Huey’s head-shaking antics fueling this coming-of-age narrative, the story triumphs as a tender and honest exploration of race, identity, family, and homeland.
Malcolm Hansen arrives on the scene as a bold new literary voice with his stunning debut novel. Alternating between the Deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early '70s, They Come in All Colors follows a biracial teenage boy who finds his new life in the big city disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point.
It's 1968 when fourteen-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City’s most prestigious boys’ schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey’s white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River.
But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself on academic probation and facing legal charges. With his promising school career in limbo, he begins examining his current predicament at Claremont through the lens of his childhood memories of growing up in Akersburg during the Civil Rights Movement—and the chilling moments leading up to his and his mother's flight north.
With Huey’s head-shaking antics fueling this coming-of-age narrative, the story triumphs as a tender and honest exploration of race, identity, family, and homeland.
336 pages, Hardcover
Published May 29, 2018
28 people are currently reading
1775 people want to read
About the author
Malcolm Hansen
3 books18 followersMalcolm Hansen was born at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers in Chattanooga, TN. Adopted by two Civil Rights activists, his family lived in Morocco, Spain, Germany, and various parts of the United States. Malcolm left home as a teenager and after two years of high school education, went to Stanford, earning a BA in philosophy. He worked for a few years in the software industry in California before setting off for what turned out to be a decade of living, working, and traveling throughout Central America, South America, and Europe. Malcolm returned to the US to complete an MFA in Fiction from Columbia. He currently lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.
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February 12, 2020
See my EXCLUSIVE interview with the author HERE! Malcolm Hansen Chats With Me About His Debut Novel
Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All Colors is a satirical narrative worthy of Paul Beatty’s stamp of approval. By that I mean it’s obvious that this book was either inspired or nurtured in some way by the Man Booker Prize-winning Beatty, if not both, and his style is so evident here that there were times this novel could have been written by the same hand. (He is even thanked in Color’s acknowledgements.) For those of you who follow my reviews, you’ll recall that I couldn’t stand Beatty’s award-winning The Sellout and marked it DNF, but just because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree doesn’t mean it may not taste different.
They Come in All Colors is the story of one boy’s realization that the color of his skin does make a difference one long summer when the Freedom Riders come to his small town and the status quo around him is thrown into upheaval. Meet Huey, the smart-mouthed eight-year-old son of a white peanut farmer and a “mulatto’’ woman. Because of his Caucasian features and his close relationship with his father, Huey has always been allowed to pass as white, but when racial tensions erupt, resulting in protests, sit-ins, riots and the violent death of someone close to his family, the facts of life are very quickly called into question between this couple who cannot legally wed in the South and their son who finds himself banned from the “white” swimming pool and called n*gger for the first time.
One of the more effective devices used within these pages is satire. In fact, really, the entire premise of the novel is satirical, but I appreciated Hansen’s wielding of it here and found it to be far more useful and self-evident than Beatty displayed in The Sellout. Here, that humorous device had more meaning and thus resonated louder and longer for me. Case in point, Huey encounters the most ridiculous conversations with his parents as they both try to explain to him why he isn’t colored though his mother is black. They tell him he’s white with a tan – an ironic notion in and of itself in 1960s South Georgia:
Though the start of this book was far too similar in tone to The Sellout, which means it too almost got DNFd, I pushed through a bit further and found that Hansen showed real dexterity with the metaphors and analogies that abound in this narrative. The imagery of the South is realistic and comes off nearly as oppressive within these pages as it did in real life. One of the better metaphors comes when Huey tries to set his pet cat free after the violence in his town starts to come to a head; he makes a very clear parallel, though he himself does not know or understand it, between the release from the bondage of slavery just a few short generations before and his releasing of his pet into the wild:
Then, of course, there are the lovely and impactful nuggets of truth as Huey’s self-realization of his and his family’s status in the world around them continues snowballing – as he realizes that schools are segregated and that he is the “last person in town to discover the truth” about who he is. They come faster and harder in the second half of the novel as pretenses begin to be stripped away and the threshold for denial becomes shallower and shallower:
When I asked Mom who in his right mind would choose to be the descendant of a slave if given a choice, she gave me a contemptuous look.
You don’t have a choice.
Don’t be silly. Of course I do. We all have choices. Everything is a choice.
She called me, of all things, a disgrace to my race. I asked what she was referring to, precisely. Only the week before, she was peddling the idea of the whole concept of race as a sham concocted by a few eighteenth-century white men with powdered hair to more conveniently consolidate power, and now here I was, not having even had time to shit out the food I’d been eating at the time, come to find out that I was betraying it.
While we’re on the topic of the second half of They Come in All Colors, now’s as good a time as any to say that the latter fourth or so of the novel offered too many holes in the narrative for me to forgive and inspired more questions for me than satisfying answers. AND while we’re on the topic of my pet peeves with this book, now’s also as good a time as any to point out the added GLARING problem that there were no quotation marks used in this novel whatsoever. Normally, this narrative tool wouldn’t be a problem, but combined with the ramblingly verbose chunks of dialogue and the use of long chapters and thick, hulking narrative blocks on every page, traditional formatting of dialogue would have been a welcome reprieve to break up the pages and make this novel seem like a faster read. By the time I got to the middle of They Come in All Colors I was honestly halfway exhausted from wading through the waters of prose and checking the page count to see how close I was to the end. (spoiler: To my dismay, I was nowhere close to it.)
Yet, this novel did more good for me than it did harm. It called into question not only the lies we tell ourselves to cope but the lies adults tell children and parents tell their offspring to maintain their innocence. What good is the façade - what’s the point of holding onto a false innocence just a few weeks or months or short years longer - if the inevitable realization only hits harder and is more damaging than having understood it from the start? Because then a child must also cope with the fact that not only has their existence been a lie in some shape, form or fashion but that the adults around them are imperfect beings – who lie and cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. In Western civilization, we raise our kids with lies as a fundamental part of their upbringing – tooth fairies and Santa Clauses and excuses for the way the world is. I’ve never thought that was a productive or practical tool of parenting, and Hansen definitely manages to expose the detriment of shielding and coddling kids from what the real world holds. For that, I applauded him.
While the ending of the novel was too abrupt for me to find a ton of fulfillment in it, I did appreciate the nuggets of truth that Huey grows aware enough to impart on the reader -
- and that his mother, Peola, finally finds the strength to impart on him after nearly a decade of insisting to him that he was white:
For these dazzling moments of truth and forthrightness, I forgave many of the novel’s other sins. I recommend this novel to lovers of Paul Beatty’s work. You can think of Hansen as Paul Beatty lite. 😁 And I’d also recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a cutting parody of historical events or an incisively sardonic look at the color line in America. You can always count on me to reach for a novel that offers both social commentary and satire all in the same sitting, so I’m happy to have added this book to my list of reads for this year. All in all, Hansen’s debut offered bite and wit to account for what it lacked (mostly a more streamlined formatting and a more punching conclusion) and for that I give 3.5 stars. ***
*I received an advance-read copy of this novel from the publisher, Simon & Schuster, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Malcolm Hansen’s debut novel They Come in All Colors is a satirical narrative worthy of Paul Beatty’s stamp of approval. By that I mean it’s obvious that this book was either inspired or nurtured in some way by the Man Booker Prize-winning Beatty, if not both, and his style is so evident here that there were times this novel could have been written by the same hand. (He is even thanked in Color’s acknowledgements.) For those of you who follow my reviews, you’ll recall that I couldn’t stand Beatty’s award-winning The Sellout and marked it DNF, but just because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree doesn’t mean it may not taste different.
They Come in All Colors is the story of one boy’s realization that the color of his skin does make a difference one long summer when the Freedom Riders come to his small town and the status quo around him is thrown into upheaval. Meet Huey, the smart-mouthed eight-year-old son of a white peanut farmer and a “mulatto’’ woman. Because of his Caucasian features and his close relationship with his father, Huey has always been allowed to pass as white, but when racial tensions erupt, resulting in protests, sit-ins, riots and the violent death of someone close to his family, the facts of life are very quickly called into question between this couple who cannot legally wed in the South and their son who finds himself banned from the “white” swimming pool and called n*gger for the first time.
One of the more effective devices used within these pages is satire. In fact, really, the entire premise of the novel is satirical, but I appreciated Hansen’s wielding of it here and found it to be far more useful and self-evident than Beatty displayed in The Sellout. Here, that humorous device had more meaning and thus resonated louder and longer for me. Case in point, Huey encounters the most ridiculous conversations with his parents as they both try to explain to him why he isn’t colored though his mother is black. They tell him he’s white with a tan – an ironic notion in and of itself in 1960s South Georgia:
Huey, listen to me. Your mother’s what’s known in the scientific community as a phenotypic anomaly. Okay? Someone of unknown morphology. A racial enigma—something so new they don’t have a name for it yet. You watch Wild Kingdom, right? Well, it’s like a newly discovered animal that they haven’t figured out where to put it in the classification system yet. Okay? So it’s pointless to even bother asking. Because—well—the truth is that if people can’t agree, we might never know... At the end of the day, you’re just going to have to accept that even if she is what you think she might be—which she isn’t—her being one wouldn’t make you one. Okay? You’re just going to have to accept that you’re different. That’s all there is to it.
Though the start of this book was far too similar in tone to The Sellout, which means it too almost got DNFd, I pushed through a bit further and found that Hansen showed real dexterity with the metaphors and analogies that abound in this narrative. The imagery of the South is realistic and comes off nearly as oppressive within these pages as it did in real life. One of the better metaphors comes when Huey tries to set his pet cat free after the violence in his town starts to come to a head; he makes a very clear parallel, though he himself does not know or understand it, between the release from the bondage of slavery just a few short generations before and his releasing of his pet into the wild:
Having surrendered Snowflake to the bitter wild, I decided that I wanted her back. I knew in my heart that she wasn’t ready to be set free but I’d done it anyway. I could see that she wasn’t sure what to do with all that freedom, that it was too much for her little brain to comprehend. All that freedom being dumped on her all at once like that. I should probably have tested it out by giving her teaspoon-sized doses of freedom first. Perhaps let her run free in the den to start. What had I been thinking?
Then, of course, there are the lovely and impactful nuggets of truth as Huey’s self-realization of his and his family’s status in the world around them continues snowballing – as he realizes that schools are segregated and that he is the “last person in town to discover the truth” about who he is. They come faster and harder in the second half of the novel as pretenses begin to be stripped away and the threshold for denial becomes shallower and shallower:
When I asked Mom who in his right mind would choose to be the descendant of a slave if given a choice, she gave me a contemptuous look.
You don’t have a choice.
Don’t be silly. Of course I do. We all have choices. Everything is a choice.
She called me, of all things, a disgrace to my race. I asked what she was referring to, precisely. Only the week before, she was peddling the idea of the whole concept of race as a sham concocted by a few eighteenth-century white men with powdered hair to more conveniently consolidate power, and now here I was, not having even had time to shit out the food I’d been eating at the time, come to find out that I was betraying it.
While we’re on the topic of the second half of They Come in All Colors, now’s as good a time as any to say that the latter fourth or so of the novel offered too many holes in the narrative for me to forgive and inspired more questions for me than satisfying answers. AND while we’re on the topic of my pet peeves with this book, now’s also as good a time as any to point out the added GLARING problem that there were no quotation marks used in this novel whatsoever. Normally, this narrative tool wouldn’t be a problem, but combined with the ramblingly verbose chunks of dialogue and the use of long chapters and thick, hulking narrative blocks on every page, traditional formatting of dialogue would have been a welcome reprieve to break up the pages and make this novel seem like a faster read. By the time I got to the middle of They Come in All Colors I was honestly halfway exhausted from wading through the waters of prose and checking the page count to see how close I was to the end. (spoiler: To my dismay, I was nowhere close to it.)
Yet, this novel did more good for me than it did harm. It called into question not only the lies we tell ourselves to cope but the lies adults tell children and parents tell their offspring to maintain their innocence. What good is the façade - what’s the point of holding onto a false innocence just a few weeks or months or short years longer - if the inevitable realization only hits harder and is more damaging than having understood it from the start? Because then a child must also cope with the fact that not only has their existence been a lie in some shape, form or fashion but that the adults around them are imperfect beings – who lie and cannot always be trusted to tell the truth. In Western civilization, we raise our kids with lies as a fundamental part of their upbringing – tooth fairies and Santa Clauses and excuses for the way the world is. I’ve never thought that was a productive or practical tool of parenting, and Hansen definitely manages to expose the detriment of shielding and coddling kids from what the real world holds. For that, I applauded him.
While the ending of the novel was too abrupt for me to find a ton of fulfillment in it, I did appreciate the nuggets of truth that Huey grows aware enough to impart on the reader -
I was being mocked and maligned on a daily basis for having the gall to use the color of my skin to gain advantage where it concerned getting into Claremont, and here people like Zuk pulled shit like that all the time and weren’t even aware of it, much less feeling pangs of guilt about it.
- and that his mother, Peola, finally finds the strength to impart on him after nearly a decade of insisting to him that he was white:
I’m going to tell you this once, sweetheart, and then I’m never going to tell it to you again. So listen well. Any person you know who has not had a family member enslaved is at a two-hundred-fifty-year advantage over you. Okay? Not the other way around. You must understand that one simple fact. You have ancestors—blood relatives, real people, connected to you by blood and history—who were enslaved, who had their families, language, labor, freedom, possessions, and identity taken from them by force and used to the advantage of everyone you see around you right here, right now. That is, everyone but us. So do not ever let anyone talk to you like you’re some goddamned drain on society. Ever! That would be like scorning the man who has built your house for not owning one himself. That’s just wrong. The only thing you oughta be worried about asking any of them is what the hell they have to show for the last two hundred fifty years of their advantage. And I don’t care if for those two hundred fifty years their ancestors were in Europe or Asia or Russia or on Mars or wherever, because I can guarantee you that they were not in chains.
For these dazzling moments of truth and forthrightness, I forgave many of the novel’s other sins. I recommend this novel to lovers of Paul Beatty’s work. You can think of Hansen as Paul Beatty lite. 😁 And I’d also recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a cutting parody of historical events or an incisively sardonic look at the color line in America. You can always count on me to reach for a novel that offers both social commentary and satire all in the same sitting, so I’m happy to have added this book to my list of reads for this year. All in all, Hansen’s debut offered bite and wit to account for what it lacked (mostly a more streamlined formatting and a more punching conclusion) and for that I give 3.5 stars. ***
*I received an advance-read copy of this novel from the publisher, Simon & Schuster, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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June 15, 2018
On one level, They Come in All Colors is a wonderfully rich and complex coming of age tale. The story is told from the point of view of Huey Fairchild, the biracial son a a Georgia peanut farmer and the beautiful black woman he is not permitted to marry in the apartheid American South of the 1950’s. The racial tensions eventually tear the family apart, and Huey moves to New York City with his mother, where Huey continues to struggle with questions of racial identity.
But the novel is considerably more than the delivery vehicle for a social message. We learn that Huey’s narrative is written as a kind of penance for an assault on a fellow student at Clarement, the elite New York prep school to which Huey, against all odds, has been admitted. Huey is told that he must write a fifty-page essay “exploring the root causes of shame as a source of anger and a lack of personal accountability and a depleted sense of self-worth.”
At first Huey protests: “Fifty pages? That’s a book!” But as Huey writes, the narrative becomes something more. Huey discovers that his art enables him to transcend the world in which he is perpetual victim, a world over which he has no control, in which he is helplessly buffeted “like a dead leaf kicked up in the autumn wind.” At 50 pages Huey finds that he is just getting warmed up. Huey, like Hansen, conjures an imaginative world which transcends the oppressive realities which surround him.
The novel accomplishes what Nabokov tells us is the purpose of great fiction: “ . . . to afford what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.” A whites only swimming pool in Akersburg becomes a powerful symbol for Huey, a “keyhole” through which he glimpses a world in which brutality and thuggishness and pettiness give way to grace, to beauty, to possibilities.
“They Come in All Colors” is the most interesting and original debut novel that I have read in quite a few years. It is technically accomplished. Upon entering Hansen’s world, one looks around in wonder and appreciation--and after 350 pages, regrets reaching the exit.
But the novel is considerably more than the delivery vehicle for a social message. We learn that Huey’s narrative is written as a kind of penance for an assault on a fellow student at Clarement, the elite New York prep school to which Huey, against all odds, has been admitted. Huey is told that he must write a fifty-page essay “exploring the root causes of shame as a source of anger and a lack of personal accountability and a depleted sense of self-worth.”
At first Huey protests: “Fifty pages? That’s a book!” But as Huey writes, the narrative becomes something more. Huey discovers that his art enables him to transcend the world in which he is perpetual victim, a world over which he has no control, in which he is helplessly buffeted “like a dead leaf kicked up in the autumn wind.” At 50 pages Huey finds that he is just getting warmed up. Huey, like Hansen, conjures an imaginative world which transcends the oppressive realities which surround him.
The novel accomplishes what Nabokov tells us is the purpose of great fiction: “ . . . to afford what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.” A whites only swimming pool in Akersburg becomes a powerful symbol for Huey, a “keyhole” through which he glimpses a world in which brutality and thuggishness and pettiness give way to grace, to beauty, to possibilities.
“They Come in All Colors” is the most interesting and original debut novel that I have read in quite a few years. It is technically accomplished. Upon entering Hansen’s world, one looks around in wonder and appreciation--and after 350 pages, regrets reaching the exit.
April 24, 2018
This book was incredibly and masterfully written. For a debut, this definitely makes Malcolm Hansen an author to watch.
The story is narrated by Huey, in flashbacks as an 8 year old boy, and as a 12 year old at a prestigious school. Huey's narration has an amazing ability to drop the reader right into the story. The reader, presumably, has at least a rudimentary knowledge about the civil unrest in the deep south in the early 1960s. Huey, however, does not. He's just a child trying to live his life and have a fun summer. Because the story is told entirely through his innocent eyes, the reader has a unique participatory opportunity to interpret the events Huey sees and pull greater meaning from them than even the characters can. For this reason, the book can read on many different levels simultaneously and makes Huey's story dependent on the reader for full context. I have never read a novel like this before and I deeply admire the writing craft of this book. The story itself is a difficult one to read because it isn't cheerful by any means. There is a lot of depth and darkness to Huey's story, but it's extremely powerful, important, and relevant to modern times. I sincerely hope They Come in All Colors will be widely read and discussed.
The story is narrated by Huey, in flashbacks as an 8 year old boy, and as a 12 year old at a prestigious school. Huey's narration has an amazing ability to drop the reader right into the story. The reader, presumably, has at least a rudimentary knowledge about the civil unrest in the deep south in the early 1960s. Huey, however, does not. He's just a child trying to live his life and have a fun summer. Because the story is told entirely through his innocent eyes, the reader has a unique participatory opportunity to interpret the events Huey sees and pull greater meaning from them than even the characters can. For this reason, the book can read on many different levels simultaneously and makes Huey's story dependent on the reader for full context. I have never read a novel like this before and I deeply admire the writing craft of this book. The story itself is a difficult one to read because it isn't cheerful by any means. There is a lot of depth and darkness to Huey's story, but it's extremely powerful, important, and relevant to modern times. I sincerely hope They Come in All Colors will be widely read and discussed.
November 22, 2018
Wow. Just wow. This is one of the best books I’ve read over the past year (which is a pretty high bar, since i’ve read some incredible books). Huey Fairchild is 8 years old when the Civil Rights movement comes to his small town in Georgia. Unaware that his white-passing mother is Black, making him biracial, we see through his eyes, the violence towards Black civil rights activists, and subsequently, directed towards his family. It’s told between the past and the present, where his mother and him now live in the Jacob Riis Houses in New York City, juxtaposing the past and present to weave together an incredible, but sometimes painful-to-read story. I can’t recommend this book enough. Read it!
March 29, 2018
They Come in All Colors by Malcolm Hansen is a coming of age story based in the 1960’s during the Civil Rights movement. Our main character, Huey, takes us back and forth between his 8 year old self in the small town of Akersburg, GA, and his teenage self in NYC where he attends the prestigious Claremont prep school. Huey is biracial with a white father and a black mother and the entire story is told from his perspective, as a child and then as a teen. The plot also skips between several places and times in what appears to be randomly at first, but as the book moves forward it begins to make more sense.
Reading about the Civil Rights protests in a small town in the Deep South through an 8 year old’s eyes is disconcerting at the very least. I sometimes felt like I wanted to race through these parts just so I could find out how Huey finally finds out/realizes that he’s not actually white, and how he deals with it. Seeing racial tension rise to boiling point through a kid’s eyes felt very eye opening: and the narrative is so well written that you feel like you are there with him, trapped in this mind of a kid who doesn’t really understand the absolute stupidity of adults, as well as the deeply rooted issues that are being fought against.
I love how well-rounded Huey is as a character. He’s a real teenager, he has to deal with all the issues regular teens deal with as well as living in a new city which is night and day from his home town, but also the issue of not fitting in, even in the more progressive north. He’s still the only biracial kid in his school where white supremacy is all powerful. Huey’s vision comes from what he has been taught, and what he believes to be the truth: and he has a hard time reconciling everything he has seen in his life.
I don’t want to add too many spoilers, and if I start getting into the plot I will. Let me just say that this novel is a gem. It took me a few chapters to get into it though as Huey’s narrative is very much stream of consciousness. His thoughts are all over the place, so it takes a while to get used to it. I’m so glad I didn’t let myself just be lazy and put it aside though, because They Come in All Colors is brilliant. It’s an epic view on recent history, and on today as well, but also an excellent display of how a childhood is shaped by events within the family and also current events, and how we hiding the truth to avoid pain often causes more pain down the line...
I just want everyone to read this book! They Come in All Colors will be published on May 29th, 2018 by Simon & Schuster. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this novel.
Reading about the Civil Rights protests in a small town in the Deep South through an 8 year old’s eyes is disconcerting at the very least. I sometimes felt like I wanted to race through these parts just so I could find out how Huey finally finds out/realizes that he’s not actually white, and how he deals with it. Seeing racial tension rise to boiling point through a kid’s eyes felt very eye opening: and the narrative is so well written that you feel like you are there with him, trapped in this mind of a kid who doesn’t really understand the absolute stupidity of adults, as well as the deeply rooted issues that are being fought against.
I love how well-rounded Huey is as a character. He’s a real teenager, he has to deal with all the issues regular teens deal with as well as living in a new city which is night and day from his home town, but also the issue of not fitting in, even in the more progressive north. He’s still the only biracial kid in his school where white supremacy is all powerful. Huey’s vision comes from what he has been taught, and what he believes to be the truth: and he has a hard time reconciling everything he has seen in his life.
I don’t want to add too many spoilers, and if I start getting into the plot I will. Let me just say that this novel is a gem. It took me a few chapters to get into it though as Huey’s narrative is very much stream of consciousness. His thoughts are all over the place, so it takes a while to get used to it. I’m so glad I didn’t let myself just be lazy and put it aside though, because They Come in All Colors is brilliant. It’s an epic view on recent history, and on today as well, but also an excellent display of how a childhood is shaped by events within the family and also current events, and how we hiding the truth to avoid pain often causes more pain down the line...
I just want everyone to read this book! They Come in All Colors will be published on May 29th, 2018 by Simon & Schuster. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy of this novel.
September 23, 2018
This book was unlike anything I’ve read before. The narrator was a fresh perspective and the jump from rural Georgia to the projects in New York were very catching! Peola was by far my favorite character even though we never get to her directly. All in all, a very enlightening story and a really good read!
December 27, 2018
I wish this book would become the first in a series.
Hansen weaves the story beautifully, leaving just enough opportunity for you to discover your own views of the world and how it frames your perspectives on color, class and race.
Hansen weaves the story beautifully, leaving just enough opportunity for you to discover your own views of the world and how it frames your perspectives on color, class and race.
January 9, 2019
I bought this book as a Christmas present for a friend and thought I would just glance at a few pages on my way home on the subway. I could not put this book down. I've bought three more to give to friends. Everyone should read this book!
April 12, 2019
I rarely write actual reviews but this book is a must read....there is so much to take in....the insight into a this child’s life in the 60’s is so upsetting and eye opening.
Read
September 2, 2022I just couldn’t get far with this one.
I guess I am officially what is called “Old School.”
This is the third book this year that I’ve given up on because there are no quotation marks used in sentences of dialogue.
Plus, the plot was difficult to follow.
I guess I am officially what is called “Old School.”
This is the third book this year that I’ve given up on because there are no quotation marks used in sentences of dialogue.
Plus, the plot was difficult to follow.
November 11, 2018
This was quite a challenging read. The way the dialogue was written with no quotation marks and no speaker tags made it sometimes difficult to figure out who was saying what, let alone why. While this was frustrating at times I think it helped to keep the reader in the mindset of Huey, an eight year old bi-racial boy living in Georgia at the time of racial upheavals and tensions, including a visit by the Freedom Riders. Huey wasn't even aware that he was bi-racial and since he was only eight struggled to understand exactly what was happening around him, let alone why. Since Huey is the narrator, giving us his very imperfect account of what is going on it takes the reader a while the comprehend the story and the sihnificance of some events as well. Slow careful reading was definitely required. Despite, or in some ways because of, these difficulties I thought the novel did a good job of portraying this period in American history. Huey's being biracial meant he experienced violence, cruelty, discrimination and exclusion from both blacks and whites. The fact of his being a child made it all the more horrific. Compounding this was the casual racism practised by Huey himself when he believed himself to be white. I was slightly frustrated that important parts of the story that were not actually included e.g. the moment when Huey finally realised that he wasn't white.
May 30, 2018
As soon as I read the blurb on this book I was eager to get my hands on a copy. It's a coming of age story about a bi-racial boy who witnesses and experiences prejudice in his hometown in Georgia in the 1960's (although not quite understanding what he was witnessing), and later, in the 1970's, as a teen in NYC as he attends an all-white prestigious high school.
Unfortunately, I struggled on and off for two weeks to get through this book. I didn't connect with the story or the main character and found the author's method of telling the story disjointed, hard to follow and the lack of quotation marks didn't help matters. While I think the author was trying for a look at civil rights and racism through the eyes of a child (kind of like John Boyne looked at the Holocaust through the eyes of young Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), I don't think that was achieved here. I felt it lacked emotion, connection to its characters and fluidity in the storytelling.
While others may enjoy this book more, They Come In All Colors just wasn't for me.
Disclaimer: This Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) was generously provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
Unfortunately, I struggled on and off for two weeks to get through this book. I didn't connect with the story or the main character and found the author's method of telling the story disjointed, hard to follow and the lack of quotation marks didn't help matters. While I think the author was trying for a look at civil rights and racism through the eyes of a child (kind of like John Boyne looked at the Holocaust through the eyes of young Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), I don't think that was achieved here. I felt it lacked emotion, connection to its characters and fluidity in the storytelling.
While others may enjoy this book more, They Come In All Colors just wasn't for me.
Disclaimer: This Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) was generously provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
October 11, 2018
Set in the 1960's - specifically 1962 & 1968 - Huey Fairchild is a mixed race boy trying to figure out his place during the heart of the civil-rights era. A large amount of the story is set in 1962 as Huey remembers the year that the Freedom Riders came to his hometown of Akersburg, GA - and the racial tensions that boiled to overflowing that year. The rest of the story is told in 1968, Huey is now a student at Claremont Prep in New York City and he is finally forced to come to grips with the fact that his isn't simply white or simply black but a mixture of both races.
This is a tough - but important - read. It continually slaps the reader in the face with the effects of racism and bigotry. It is definitely not a light read but it is an enlightening one.
This is a tough - but important - read. It continually slaps the reader in the face with the effects of racism and bigotry. It is definitely not a light read but it is an enlightening one.
September 21, 2018
I found this a difficult book to read, both emotionally and cognitively, but it was, nevertheless, excellent and worth reading. It was recommended to me by a fellow blogger, and I folded it in to my 3-part prep-school bloc. It turned out to not have a lot of prep-school in it - mostly it's set in rural Georgia - but it was an effective use of contrast in showing the development of a child whose identity is kept from him until it's forced upon him.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.
May 2, 2019
I really loved this novel. A really powerful and funny story about a biracial boy growing up in Georgia in time of segregation. It is fiction but I think it is probably much autobiography too because it feels very real. I recommend this book to everyone who wants to undertsand this time in our country.
September 5, 2018
First off, the storytelling felt really disjointed, jumping back and forth in time and making the key points difficult to follow. I didn't like the fact that all dialogue is italicized, and requires a lot of context clues and re-reading of passages to ferret out who exactly is speaking. But primarily I had such a hard time connecting to and empathizing with Huey, even though I wanted to. I feel like the book had an interesting premise, but I was not at all moved or captivated by the presentation and execution of the ideas.
February 14, 2020
NICE BOOK.
May 31, 2020
I am surprised this book has not gotten more attention. I found the conversations the book brought up to be very productive and I enjoyed getting to see all of this from a young biracial boy as he discovers racism for himself.
Because our narrator is a young boy and he does not fully know what is going on that means we as the reader do not know what is going on which made a lot of the book very confusing but the confusion was cleared as the story went on and more and more was revealed.
My only two complaints about this book are the confusion in the beginning and middle of the book and also the amount of language coming out of that 8 years old’s mouth, but I know my complaints are very surface level and do not take much away from the story.
Even though this book is set in the 1960’s the topics from this book still remain prevalent today in 2020 and not just things that have happened in the past.
Because our narrator is a young boy and he does not fully know what is going on that means we as the reader do not know what is going on which made a lot of the book very confusing but the confusion was cleared as the story went on and more and more was revealed.
My only two complaints about this book are the confusion in the beginning and middle of the book and also the amount of language coming out of that 8 years old’s mouth, but I know my complaints are very surface level and do not take much away from the story.
Even though this book is set in the 1960’s the topics from this book still remain prevalent today in 2020 and not just things that have happened in the past.
June 13, 2019
This book explained itself perfectly before I realized that it was explaining itself. It truly and artfully explores "the root causes of shame as a source of anger and lack of personal accountability and depleted self-worth." It is a painful and intimate depiction of a journey through racial self-discovery in the segregation era, brought about by the freedom fighters entering a small farming town and the accusations surrounding a breach in an all-white swimming pool. The two-timeline structure of this novel makes you think creatively about how child becomes teenager, how self-identified white boy becomes self-identified brown boy, how white-passing mother becomes proud black mother, how farm town becomes New York City. I never connected the dots quite right, but Malcolm does so in a beautiful, heart wrenching way.
June 10, 2018
I tried hard to get into this one, but the disjointed narrative was hard to follow. Also, all the dialogue was set in italics and it was hard to tell who was saying what. I wish writers would realize that not setting their dialogue in the usual quote marks makes it hard on the reader to follow. Writing dialogue in italics or setting it apart with asterisks or en-dashes (or sometimes nothing at all) is not cutesy or avant-garde or artsy fartsy or the sign of someone running in a high-minded literary society. Writing dialogue in any other format than what is usually acceptable is annoying as hell.
June 30, 2020
Like any good Bildungsroman, seeing the world through the eyes of Huey, our narrator, allows us (the reader) to learn and grow as he does. Observing civil rights movements and injustices through the eyes of a child is very powerful and very enlightening. Published in 2018 but possibly even more relevant in 2020.
July 4, 2020
I read this in quarantine before all that happened in May. I am so happy that I did. I learned a lot about this time in our history and thought about Huey a lot during the protests in NYC. I think this is the best book I have read about the mixed-race experience. I recommend to anyone who wants to understand more about race in America.
March 29, 2020
3.5! i think the book started slow but picked up toward the middle. the narrative was interesting
August 12, 2020
Brilliant.
Read
August 11, 2020I chose to read the novel "They Come In All Colors" by Malcolm Hansen because I was intrigued by his journey as a published author. His story has given me hope to continue pursuing my dreams. The book is about a biracial boy named Huey, who grows up in Akensburg, Georgia in the 1960's with his parents. His mother is black and his father is white, and they both avoid sharing his African American heritage with him. It takes a tragedy for Huey to realize the hatred that white people have toward black people. Huey and his mother relocate to New York City in the 1970's in search of a better life, leaving behind his dad. Huey begins attending Claremont Prep, one of New York's prestigious boys' schools. He struggles for the first 3 years without his father in his life, trying to fit in. Just when Huey thinks he's got it all figured out, he does the unthinkable. The act of hatred he commits puts his fate in jeopardy. It's at that point that Huey has the breakthrough he has so desperately been longing for. I liked this book because there are some elements in this story that still exist today. As much as I've enjoyed reading this book, I did however experience challenges with the jumping back and forth between the past and present timeline. I thought I was misreading for the first couple of chapters of the book and began re-thinking my book choice. I thought maybe the text was too complex to understand. Then I had a breakthrough like the main character (Huey) in the story. Despite my early challenges I continued to read and gain clarity, and absolutely enjoyed it!
August 5, 2019
I found this book to be a surprisingly endearing story of a young boy and learning to accept his life.His parents were heroes to me and loved each other through a very complex time. I laughed at Huey's old man banter,and cried for this child.Bravo,Mr.Hansen,bravo.
May 8, 2018
Received as an ARC from the publisher. Started 5-3-18. Finished 5-8-18. I don't know what to say about this book. The coming-of-age of a bi-racial boy living in a small town in Georgia. He experiences prejudice without truly understanding it; secrets between his mother and his father; difficulties in school; his own orneriness (if that's a word). He and his parents, to me, seem to be suffering from ADHD----Oh, look, there's a squirrel!!!! None of them can stick to a topic when they begin talking. Their conversations are all over the place. He experiences freedom riders coming to his town and the violence that erupts. Eventually he and his mother separate from the father and move to NYC where Huey(our main character) gets into an elite prep school. I liked him better as a youngster. As a teen, he's snarky, know-it-all, and has no respect for others. There were plenty of "bombshells" released in this tale but many were not resolved, unless the author is planning a sequel.
March 20, 2021
I know this may happen but I wondered how parents could not tell a son he's not white. I know it's a small town in the South but I'm amazed the town went with this until the Freedom Riders came. What a powerful summer. It's Pea's story I'm shocked by..what she gave up. What she thought the legacy for her son would. Her growth in New York.
March 12, 2021
It's about a fifteen-year-old named Huey Fairchild who messes up at the very beginning, almost killing his best friend. The question the story deals with is, "why did he do it?" Huey explains it to us, taking us back eight years to one summer when he was seven. He recounts the circumstances, events, and betrayal he went through that summer that shaped him as a person. We come to understand why Huey has done what he's done and why, thereby helping us understand him and his actions a little more.
Although Huey escapes to the North, he finds himself confronting the same types of racial issues that he dealt with down in the South, albeit differently. I thought that was an interesting juxtaposition. Even in New York, he still finds himself right where he started.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/mal...
Although Huey escapes to the North, he finds himself confronting the same types of racial issues that he dealt with down in the South, albeit differently. I thought that was an interesting juxtaposition. Even in New York, he still finds himself right where he started.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/mal...
July 4, 2020
By my account I'm about five years younger than the protagonist here but I recognize both the South and North of my childhood in this Novel. In your face racism, back handed racism, private schools, and all. I wish I could say more has changed. Huey is a great character and it's a refreshing take on being both black and white.
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