Call Me By My Name - Softcover

Bradley, John Ed

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1442497947 ISBN 13: 9781442497948

Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

“Heartbreaking.” —Laurie Halse Anderson, acclaimed author of Speak

“John Ed Bradley skillfully shines a beam of humanity through the prism of the game, revealing to us the full spectrum of its colors, from love to hate, bigotry to tolerance, and devotion to betrayal.” —Tim Green, retired NFL player and bestselling author​

From former football star and bestselling author John Ed Bradley comes a searing teen novel that looks at love, life, and football in the face of racial adversity.

Growing up in Louisiana in the late 1960s, Tater Henry has experienced a lot of prejudice. His town is slow to desegregate and slower still to leave behind deep-seated prejudice.

Despite the town’s sensibilities, Rodney Boulett and his twin sister Angie befriend Tater, and as their friendship grows stronger, Tater and Rodney become an unstoppable force on the football field. That is, until Rodney sees Tater and Angie growing closer, too, and Rodney’s world is turned upside down and threatened by a hate he did not know was inside of him.

As the town learns to accept notions like a black quarterback, some changes may be too difficult to accept.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Ed Bradley is the author of several highly praised novels and a memoir, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium. A former reporter for The Washington Post, he has also written for Esquire, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and Play. He lives with his wife and daughter in Mandeville, Louisiana.

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Call Me By My Name



The distance was to blame. It made him hard to categorize. “Is that one of them Redbones?” Curly Trussell asked, reaching for a bat just in case.

I lowered my mitt and strained for a better look. The kid was about a hundred yards away, moving past the pool and the pool house and the snowball stand, where “She Loves You” was playing over speakers attached to the roof. Then he crossed Market Street and entered the old shell road that ran between the tennis courts and the civic center. He was heading straight for us now, arms pumping, steps keeping time to the music. The way he carried himself, you had to wonder if he thought he was welcome. A splash of sunlight fell from the trees and caught him just right, and I could hear gasps from some of the guys. We’d all seen maids in South City Park before, and a few old trusties from the jailhouse pushing mowers and pulling weeds, but except for them, black people weren’t permitted. They couldn’t ride bikes or drive their cars through the park, let alone play ball there. The town had a place for them.

It was May of 1965, and school had just let out for the summer. There were hundreds of us scattered over three fields waiting for tryouts to begin. Until this moment I’d been loosening up with the other Pony League kids—playing catch, swinging a bat with a doughnut on the barrel, and running sprints in the weeds.

“Look at him, Curly!” Freddie Sanders yelled. “Look close. That’s a full-blown colored if I ever saw one.”

Then a bunch of them ran to the road and grabbed shell to throw.

I couldn’t see how the kid posed much of a threat. He was on the lean side, with an overall construction so rickety you wondered if he even ate. Give him a different skin color and he could’ve been one of us—just another kid with dreams of glory in his head. His striped tube socks climbed up to his kneecaps and his black All-Stars had holes punched in the fabric. A short-fingered infielders glove hung from his belt and shone with a fresh coat of linseed oil, and the rest of his clothes—the gray T-shirt tucked into jean shorts, the faded feed-store cap—might’ve come from my own closet.

He was showing no fear that I could make out, and maybe that added to why they had such a problem with him. “Let’s get him!” Curly shouted. “Let’s make him pay.” And now the shell started to fly.

It couldn’t have hurt much because it was mostly powdery chips and pieces, but it was enough to drop him to the ground. He curled up in a defensive posture, arms wrapped around his head, legs wheeling, as if he were riding a bike. Everybody laughed at how scared he looked, including some of the adults. These were the players’ fathers who’d volunteered to coach the teams.

“Hey, boy, nobody wants you here,” one man called out.

“What is wrong with you, little brother?” said another. “You wake up this morning hankering for a beating?”

Then Curly let out a war cry and went hauling off in the kid’s direction. He stood over him with the bat held high above his head, hands wrapped around the handle. He looked like somebody with an ax about to chop some wood, only today the wood was the kid’s head. I figured he was probably just trying to scare him, but I also knew that it wasn’t wise to take chances with a person like Curly, and so I decided to do something. I ran up to him and caught him square in the back first with a shoulder and then with a forearm. Both Curly and the bat went sailing in the weeds.

The shell kept falling and the kid kept bawling. And finally I covered his body with mine.

He was scrawny in my arms, like sticks in a sack, and his breath smelled of toothpaste, the cinnamon kind. That he was a skeleton who brushed his teeth made me feel even sorrier for him. “Don’t you know the rules?” I asked him.

“What rules?”

“You’re in the wrong park. They don’t let Negroes in here.”

“Who doesn’t?”

I couldn’t answer that so I let it pass without trying to.

We waited until the shell stopped coming. I got up and brushed myself off, then I lifted him to his feet and dusted him off too. I put his cap back on. Then I pointed to where we should go and started walking with him there. We went past the pool and down a path in the woods that wound to the bayou that formed the park’s western border. “You’ll be fine once you make it to Railroad Avenue,” I told him.

A pedestrian bridge crossed the bayou to the other side. He got about halfway across and turned around. “I just wanted to play some ball,” he said.

“Not here you can’t,” I said. And already I was trying to understand what I’d done, the risk I’d taken. I’d have to explain myself when I got back to the Pony League field. I’d have to argue that I still was as white as everybody else.

And what would I tell Pops if he found out?

The kid stopped again on the other side of the bridge, and this time he cupped his mouth with his hands. “My name is Tater Henry,” he said.

“Rodney Boulet,” I answered, saying it the old French way: Boo-lay.

I watched him take a dirt trail that cut between large ranch-style houses. These were houses where white people lived, which meant the trail was for whites only.

Tater was up near the street when a man appeared and stood in his yard yelling. He was yelling the usual things you heard when a black person turned up where he wasn’t supposed to be and you had to put him in his place.

Tater lifted an arm and waved as if he and the man were old friends, then he kept on his way.

I was with Angie when I saw him again a few weeks later. He was raking out clumps of grass clippings in front of one of the old mansions on Court Street. I could hear a mower coming from the back lawn. The side gate in the iron fence was open and you could see a black man through it, his bald head shining with sweat as he cut rows running parallel with the fence and the street.

Angie and I were on our bikes heading toward downtown and J. W. Low to pick up something for Mama. I slowed and wheeled back around. “How you been, Tater?”

He kept working. He didn’t say anything.

“Did you go out for baseball at the black park?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“How come?”

“You can’t see? I got me this job instead.”

I watched him a while. He had his cap turned around on his head, and his long socks had fallen down to his ankles. He looked to be about my age, which was ten going on eleven. He might’ve had the skinniest calves I’d ever seen. His skin was darker than I remembered. “Is your name really Tater?”

“Tatum.”

“Tatum? So Tater’s your nickname?”

He nodded and picked up the pace with his rake. After a minute he turned his back to me. “I’m sorry, but I need to work.” And he glanced over at the gate.

“See you.”

“See you too, Rodney.”

I caught up with Angie at the dime store. She was in the sewing-needs section, digging around for a certain kind of ribbon that Mama wanted. “He’s the only black person you’ve ever talked...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1442497947
• ISBN 13: 9781442497948
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland