At the concert, he dances with abandon, feeling like he fits in with the group of assembled oddballs around him. Music allows Benji to escape from the stresses of home and the anxieties he has about fitting in. Benji does not dwell on this source of tension until the weekends when the parents are at Sag Harbor, but it’s clear Benji is made anxious by his father’s behavior.Īnother highlight of the summer is a concert with Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam and U.T.F.O. The boys find a note that their mother has written down, listing the reasons she should leave their father. When Benji’s parents come out for a weekend, it soon becomes clear that his father’s drinking and verbal abuse cause trouble for the whole family.

The episodic structure of the book suits the rhythm of summer days, showing Benji hanging out, driving with friends, thinking about girls, listening to music, going to the beach, working at the local ice cream shop, and, in one rather dramatic event, almost getting his eye shot out during a BB gunfight with his friends. Benji and Reggie first run into NP, one of their buddies, and then gradually, the whole crew of friends arrives in Sag Harbor.īenji goes into great evocative and often humorous detail explaining how their days are spent, although, as Whitehead has commented himself in his YouTube book promotion video produced by BookVideosTV, “Not a lot happens. Every year, the same group of friends meets to spend the summer together. In 1985, Benji and his brother Reggie are known as the Kids with an Empty House, since their parents rarely come out to Sag Harbor except for a few weekends.Īs soon as Benji arrives in Azurest, he wants to get a sense of who else is “out” as well. The Cooper family has been coming to Sag Harbor every year for generations, beginning with his grandparents. Benji spends most of his summer, as he does every summer, at Azurest, a historically Black beach resort of Sag Harbor, New York. Benji has great hopes at the start of the summer of 1985 that he will be able to transform himself into a much cooler, more assured version of himself. Sag Harbor chronicles the experiences of Benji Cooper, an anxious, easily embarrassed 15-year-old Black male struggling to fit in. This content is replicated only in direct quotes of the source material.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of racism, sexism, bullying, and vulgar language, as well as parental neglect that includes alcoholism, fat-shaming, and other instances of verbal abuse.

Sag harbor colson whitehead summary