Author Marcus Burke ’06 Visited Campus

4/22/2014

Author of Team Seven, Marcus Burke ’06, Visited Campus

Author Marcus Burke ’06 presented a book reading and talk, followed by a meet-and-greet, to grade 7-12 students, faculty, and the community, on Tuesday, April 15, 2014.

Marcus shared with the audience, “I graduated [from Brimmer and May] eight years ago, and eight years later I’m back, and I have a hard-cover novel!” In response to the student question, “Did anything in this book actually happen?” Marcus responded, “I started this novel very close to the bone. . . and then I [realized] that I don’t have to tell my story, I can just have a story to tell.” When asked. “Was there a person that inspired you to write this book?” he responded, “My mother. My mother and my team, they always supported me. You have to stay true to yourself. My mother instilled that in me.”

In the acknowledgement of his book Marcus thanks "the teachers and faculty who helped and encouraged me during my high school years" and includes Michael Langlois, Katherine Lanson, Emily Lucket, Nancy Bradley, Maria Gupta, Paul Murray, Cecelia Pan, and Landon Rose. He then writes, "I owe a huge dept of gratitude to the teachers and faculty who took the time to help me realize my value in the classroom. Special thanks to Anne Reenstierna for taking a chance on me while I was a slightly rough around the edges seventeen-year-old and welcoming me into the Brimmer and May community. To Nancy Drourr, for being a great teacher, adviser, and friend. Your encouragement and support over the years has been instrumental. To Janeata Robinson, for listening to my earliest writings, before I had the courage to show it to anybody else and for urging me to continue. . ."

There are few contemporary American authors that can portray the realities of black inner-city life with the empathy and honesty the topic deserves. Marcus Burke proves he can do just that in his literarily accomplished, autobiographically tinged coming-of-age debut novel Team Seven (Doubleday, click here to purchase on Amazon.com), which has an undeniably authentic feel for place, language, character, and the harsh realities of a childhood in the inner-city.

Set in the town of Milton south of Boston, TEAM SEVEN follows young Andre Battel from age eight through his teenage years as he grows away from his Jamaican family, discovers genuine prowess on the basketball court, and eventually falls into a routine of dealing drugs for the local street gang, Team Seven. When Andre and his crew fall behind on payments, they face dire and violent consequences.

The story is told primarily through Andre's voice, but we also see the points of view of his mother Ruby, a hard-working medical secretary, his older sister Nina, his mostly-not-there-and-usually-drunk-and-high father Eddie, and Reggie and Smoke, the kingpins of competing drug crews. Marcus’ creative and skillful treatment of each character’s unique view is a not an easy feat. He displays an expert command of the various dialects and registers of African-American speech, including Jamaican patois, as the voices of the characters leap off the page. What emerges is a rich, realistic portrait of a black family, a black community, and one young man poised between youthful innocence and ambiguous experience.

Marcus grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. A standout athlete, he attended Brimmer and May and was recruited to play basketball at Susquehanna University, where he played varsity for all four years. But a knee injury limited his playing time, so he took up fiction writing instead and was accepted at the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Writing grant in honor of James Alan McPherson. He graduated in 2012. Marcus lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Marcus is a strong new voice in African-American fiction, one that is sure to make great waves.

To read more about Marcus, click here.

Early Acclaim for TEAM SEVEN by Marcus Burke

“This is a book about people engulfed from childhood in complexities that would baffle any wisdom. But their hopes, though they are felt so often in the absence or failure or corruption of friendship, marriage and family, remain with them and sustain them. Team Seven achieves a rare degree of mature and compassionate insight. It is a remarkable first novel.”

—Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead

“This is one of those rare first books you'll read again and again. The prose surges forward: relentless, plainspoken and artful, the people it describes laid bare, the tender heart at the center pulsing through each chapter. Unforgettable.”

—Ayana Mathis, author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

"Team Seven is hard and clear-eyed and beautiful. It conforms to no vision other than its own, stands its own ground, and refuses to drift for even a sentence into any of the prefabricated narratives to which, in less artful hands, its characters’ lives might be vulnerable. Filled all at once and irreducibly with violence and grace, despair and hope, and that most precious element, love, Team Seven will lay claim to the hearts and implicate the souls of everyone who reads it."

—Paul Harding, author of Tinkers and Enon

“Team Seven speaks directly to you from its opening burst of beautiful lines: “Pop and Uncle Elroy smoke the strangest cigarettes I've ever smelled. They smell sort of like skunk juice and gasoline..” You are in the best of hands with Marcus Burke and his clear-eyed prose. Down-to-earth, comic, deadly and ultimately incredibly moving, this is a book that will last.”

—Peter Orner, author of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

Team Seven was featured in Oprah Magazine's "10 Titles to Pick Up Now" (June, 2014).

Read about Marcus Burke in the Boston Globe: http://ow.ly/xPEY8.

Marcus was interviewed on WBUR's Radio Boston by co-host and Brimmer and May parent Anthony Brooks. To listen to his interview, click here.

Author Marcus Burke ’06 Visited Campus

Brimmer and May School