Team Seven

"Team Seven follows a young black boy who lives outside of Boston, and it’s largely about his relationship with his father. He’s having to make some hard decisions about his involvement with a local gang. He’s also an athlete and is realising that he possibly has a future in basketball. It’s a beautiful novel about an urban landscape. There aren’t enough books like this one, and for our purposes, I was struck by how the main character contemplates Jamaican identity. His father and mother and his grandparents are from Jamaica; they have emigrated to the US. So he has this compelling relationship with Jamaica through observing his older relatives. The novel begins when the protagonist is young, maybe ten, and continues through his teenage years. In the early chapters, his Jamaican identity is one of wonder—he contemplates the way his grandparents speak, the food that they eat. He has a very curious relationship with the island that I find striking. I have friends in the US who consider themselves American but have a Jamaican grandparent or two—they may have never visited Jamaica, and they have a similar relationship. This novel artfully explores that intimacy but also that distance. Yes, Andre has a lovely relationship with his grandfather. Paw-Paw steps in as a father figure because the narrator’s father is largely unavailable. Paw-Paw advises young Andre that he needs to learn how to cook in case his wife leaves him. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the cultural conditions that would lead Paw-Paw to offer this kind of advice. Misogyny and violence towards women are prevalent throughout the book. The sexist language Andre’s father uses with his mother during arguments feels all too familiar to me as a Jamaican woman. But I think there is hope for Andre—he interrogates some of his actions and his father’s too. And Burke does a great job of writing complex female characters, like Andre’s mother, sister and grandmother. The novel explores how the education system really isn’t set up to support black boys. Andre’s experiences of lostness and detachment are only emphasised by his school life, where teachers are quick to label him as a troublemaker. There is a moving section where he’s disciplined for taking too long in the bathroom, and he contemplates the nature of power—namely why some people have it, and others don’t. I love the idea in this passage. And it certainly speaks to this list in that postcolonial reckoning is a kind of de-programming—an intentional education. And reading and sharing diverse books about the Caribbean is also an education for people who believe that the islands are only sea and sunshine."