Synopsis

Maybe because they are young and innocent, cute black Valerie Davis and nerdy white Jeffrey Stark are late to realize that falling in love on Chicago’s South Side in 1963 is a highly risky business for an interracial couple. At first, they help each other out of tough racial fixes—he saves her from attack at an all-white amusement park and she saves him from injury in a racial brawl at their high school. But as their romance becomes more serious, so do the racial dangers. White police target Valerie as a prostitute and black gang members see Jeffrey as trying to sexually exploit a black girl. Seemingly inevitably, the blossoming romance collides head on with the realities of Northern-style racism one hot summer afternoon at one of Chicago’s most beautiful Lake Michigan beaches, when a racial protest turns ugly, confronting the couple with terrible choices.

Gouster Girl vividly depicts the raw racism so prevalent during the early 1960s, which ushered in decades of gang violence that turned sections of Chicago into the urban killing fields they are today. Gouster Girl opens in the summer of 1963 with the white Stark family tearfully moving its belongings onto a moving truck in front of the tidy South Shore neighborhood apartment building they love, just blocks from where Michelle Obama would grow up. As they load up the truck, 16-year-old Jeff and his parents argue yet again about the racial fears and fantasies that are leading them to abandon South Shore, with its delis and shuls and beautiful beaches. Through the eyes of Jeff, Gouster Girl then takes us back to the unlikely racial violence that led to his romance with Valerie and how she variously teases and embarrasses him to confront his most deeply held racial prejudices. Valerie introduces Jeff to the highs and lows of her life– to black music and dancing, as well as police corruption, job discrimination, misguided school tracking systems and housing discrimination that keeps blacks separate and unequal.

A makeout session in an isolated section of Jackson Park leads the couple into a confrontation with police, which highlights for both the realities of what we today refer to as “white privilege.” It also pushes the Stark family more fully toward a decision about whether to join other whites in fleeing South Shore.

This highly evocative coming-of-age story will alternately charm, anger terrify, and upset readers as they travel back to a time that was seemingly simpler, but was also blunt in its racial and religious prejudices.

Excerpt

It was as Nate, Lee and I were still laughingly reliving the roller coaster terror, walking past the freak show, which we always wondered about but never witnessed, that I saw Valerie again. “I think those girls go to Hyde Park,” Nate nudged me as the two walked about twenty-five feet in front of us. “I’m pretty sure one of them was in my home room last year.”

Even now, five years removed from that moment, in the comfort of my college library, it feels like only yesterday. But it really was true—in that moment my life began changing in ways I never could have imagined. Because just then, two tall slender white guys in white t-shirts and jeans, who looked to be a few years older than the girls and us, approached them from the side and began walking with them.

As the girls slowed, and we came closer, I could hear one of the guys: “My friend Vinnie, he’s got his convertible here. Wanna take a ride with us? There’s a party close by, we’ll stop, have some fun.”

The two girls didn’t seem to have answered, or if they did, it wasn’t the answer they were looking for, because the two white guys moved a little closer to the girls, and Vinnie was talking in a raised voice. “Whatsamatter, we’re not good enough for ya? You rather have one of those darkies over there?” He motioned toward the African Dip, and the Negro men sitting on the stools in each of three cages.

At that moment, one of the girls, whom I would eventually learn was Valerie, stopped in her tracks, and turned to face the two white guys. Her bouffant hairdo looked smart and fresh, her tight blue pedal pushers accentuated her blossoming small body, her bright brown eyes flashed, and the smooth light brown skin of her delicate face creased in a seemingly incongruous near snarl: “Can’t you boys take a hint? We have to spell it out for you? We don’t want a ride in your car. We don’t want anything to do with you. Just turn your white asses around and go back to where you come from.”

My jaw dropped and my eyes widened. Not only because she had stood up to them, but how she threw their racial slurs right back at them.

Vinnie and friend seemed even more shocked than I was. So much so that they stood frozen in their tracks, as the girls continued walking, though at a faster pace than before. With confused looks on their faces, the two white guys looked at each other and retreated to the midway’s sidelines, and joined a group of four or five other white teens, also in white t-shirts, who were guffawing. I presumed they had witnessed Valerie’s putdown, and were teasing their pals about their bungled pickup effort.

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About the Author

David E. Gumpert grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in South Shore and Hyde Park. In the years since graduating from the University of Chicago, he has attended Columbia Journalism School and worked as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and an editor for the Harvard Business Review and Inc. magazine. He has also authored ten nonfiction books on a variety of subjects—from entrepreneurship and small business management to food politics. His most prominent titles include How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan (from Inc. Publishing); How to Really Start Your Own Business (Inc. Publishing); Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights (Chelsea Green Publishing), and The Raw Milk Answer Book (Lauson Publishing).

He spent ten years in the 1990s and early 2000s researching his family’s history during the Holocaust. The result was a book co-authored with his deceased aunt Inge Bleier: Inge: A Girl’s Journey Through Nazi Europe (Wm. B. Eerdman Publishing).

He spent much of the last half-dozen years going back to his own roots in Chicago to research and write the historical novel, Gouster Girl. While some of it stems from his own experiences growing up in South Shore and Hyde Park, he also conducted significant additional research to complete the book in late 2019.

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