We Love You, Charlie Freeman

January 18, 2016
Greenidge’s ambitious debut novel is the multiperspective story of the Toneybee Institute, a converted music school in western Massachusetts ostensibly specializing in fostering communication between chimpanzees and humans. The Freemans—Laurel, Charles, and their two daughters, Charlotte and Callie—are a family recruited to the institute from the Boston area in 1990 on account of their skill at sign language, the methodology chosen for a new experiment. Although no members of the family are deaf, Laurel learned sign language at a young age as a result of her distrust of spoken language, growing up in Maine as the only black girl in a hundred-mile radius, and she has passed along this method of communication to her daughters. At the Toneybee Institute, the Freemans welcome a chimpanzee named Charlie into their family and begin an effort to earn his trust and, eventually, teach him to speak. Narrated mostly by Charlotte, a high school freshman, the story moves back and forth in time as we learn the secrets of the institute’s disturbing and shocking past. The narrative structure is somewhat schematic, the pieces fitting together almost too perfectly as information is withheld to provide tension. However, the themes of communication across differences is nonetheless deftly constructed, encompassing weighty issues such as race, language, sexuality, and the intersections of religion and science, arriving finally at a heartbreaking confrontation. The end result is a sobering look at how we communicate with one another and what inevitably gets lost in translation.

January 1, 2016
In Greenidge's debut novel, an African-American family is hired by a private research institute to "adopt" a chimpanzee and teach the animal sign language. Charlotte Freeman, the older of two teenage daughters, is less than enthused about her parents' decision--which means moving from their south Boston home to take up residence at the remote Toneybee Institute for Ape Research. Greenidge proves herself a master of dialogue, which helps her craft engaging, well-drawn characters. "All our pets die," Charlotte says, protesting the imminent move-in with the chimpanzee. "We're no good with animals." But Charlotte's mother, Laurel, maintains the chimpanzee is not meant to be a pet: "He'll be like a brother to you," she proclaims; as a sign language teacher, Laurel is the one who will be responsible for the chimpanzee's education. But as the book cuts between the present and the past, the racially exploitative history of the research institute is revealed, and the family's life spirals out of control. This is not surprising: there's a long racist history in the United States of comparing black Americans to monkeys--beginning with the exhibitions of Africans side by side with orangutans in the monkey houses of zoos in the early part of the 20th century and leading up to the present day, when African-Americans, including President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, are still repeatedly called "apes" and "monkeys." But with humor, irony, and wit, Greenidge tackles this sensitive subject and crafts a light but deeply respectful take on this heavy aspect of America's treatment of black people. This is a timely work, full of disturbing but necessary observations. A vivid and poignant coming-of-age story that is also an important exploration of family, race, and history.

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Starred review from June 1, 2016

Teenager Charlotte Freeman isn't thrilled when her mother uproots the family to the Toneybee Institute. All of the members of the family know how to speak in sign language and were hired to live at the Institute and teach Charlie, a chimpanzee, how to communicate. Every moment is filmed, and Charlotte is confronted with bigotry everywhere-the town is geographically divided by race. She soon discovers the wrongness of it all-an African American family raising an ape as one of their own. Back in the 1920s, the Toneybee Institute conducted racist, Tuskegee-like experiments, which readers learn about from the point of view of a black woman and from the perspective of the institute's rich white founder. Charlotte's coming-of-age story will ring true with teens, who will cringe at the blatant and subtle racism she encounters. Her sexual identity as a lesbian is never the center of the story, and neither are the apes. This is a literary yet easily approachable novel about race, family, and relationships, making Greenidge an author to watch. While the similarities to Kenneth Oppel's Half Brother and Sara Gruen's Ape House are obvious, this volume would also pair well with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. VERDICT This strong debut novel is perfect for book clubs and will initiate discussion about race, stereotypes, and microaggressions-Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
When Laurel, an African-American mother from Boston's South Side, accepts a position to teach sign language to a chimpanzee named Charlie at a private ape research facility in the verdant Berkshire Mountains, she unwittingly introduces her two young daughters to a disturbing world of mystery and misogyny, racism and retaliation. The institute's first director in the 1920s used racial profiling to horrific effect, conducting clandestine experiments on black men and seducing a lonely black woman into posing for compromising drawingsall allegedly in the name of science. Some 70 years later, Laurel's teenage daughter, Charlotte, and her youngest daughter, Callie, will find themselves caught in a struggle that pits their own blossoming desire for identity and belonging against their mother's mania for Charlie's attention and a society that has yet to acknowledge the insidious ways bigotry and discrimination undermine its most basic institutions. Greenidge's wondrous first novel pits the sins of the past against the desire for the future in a multifaceted narrative that challenges concepts of culture and communication.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)