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David Attenborough continues to teach the nation. Before watching his brand new series ‘Life’, I knew chameleons could camouflage themselves by changing the colour of their bodies to match the leaves and branches, but I never knew that some of them could make their skin brightly mutli-coloured. Let’s all watch some of last week’s ‘Life’ on the free BBC iplayer and marvel at nature.Are you done marvelling, for now? I especially like the teeny, tiny toads, but have developed a fear of bull frogs. It’s lucky they live so far away from me.
So, as ‘Life’ says, chameleons use these colours to signal things to other chameleons, just as other animals use their own methods of saying ‘go away’, or ‘come closer’. The gang characters that operate in Compton where Shawn, the narrator of Charles R Smith’s 'Chameleon’, and his friends hang out, imitate the chameleon’s method of warning others away by dressing in one gang colour, that lets people know they’re dangerous. Shawn and the guys, Lorenzo, Trent and Andre just want to hang out playing basketball, trading words and checking out girls, but their lives are often encroached on by the neighbourhood gangs. The boys have to check their clothes every day before they find something to do, to make sure they’re not wearing blue, or red, in case they meet a member of the Crips (blue) or the Pirus (red). As they remove these colours from their wardrobes the boys also imitate chameleons, indicating that they’re neutral and creating outfits that allow them to blend in so they stay out of trouble.
The theme of what colours means and how they help people shape an identity is alluded to in many situations throughout the book. When Shawn tells his mother about Marisol, the girl he likes, he associates her with three colours and the boys call a man who practises kung fu in the park ‘Black Bruce’ because he wears an all black Chinese outfit, showing how strongly a colour can become associated with a person. Later in the book Shawn becomes angry about how the gangs mean he can’t buy red or blue clothing, because as he says ‘as far as I’m concerned, if you can’t wear what you want, or go where you want, when you want, then you ain’t free.’ . These incidents and others remind the reader how choosing clothes in colours is a way in which many teenagers first begin to create their own identities and express themselves.
If you’ve read this book do you think I’d be stretching things if I said the many illusions to the importance of colour, is a symbolic way for Smith to reemphasise the importance of black teenagers engaging with their racial identity? It seems like such a strong use of colour can’t be coincidental in a novel that’s also concerned with a young, black teen coming of age, but maybe I’m reaching a bit with this idea. There are plenty of other, more straightforward examples of Smith’s passion for helping black teenagers to learn about their culture in the novel. An example of this comes when Shawn talks about how his teacher won’t give him extra credit for reading ‘Invisible Man’, by a black author who is not on the school’s official extra reading list. Through this story Smith explains how some teachers discourage teenagers from reading by insisting they read classics that do not relate to their own experiences. When Shawn starts to read ‘The Biography of Malcolm X’ on the recommendation of his mother’s professor friend I got a little emotional, as I thought about how wonderful it is that black teens have this book to help them find out about black literature.
‘Chameleon’ is a coming of age story, which means that Shawn and his friends are exposed to quite a few life lesson moments during the novel. As an adult reader I felt these lessons were a little obvious, I could see when the plot was getting ready to lead Shawn into developing his thinking. However, the plot still feels organic. I didn’t feel like any plot points were inserted artificially to allow Smith to teach a lesson, instead the plot felt like a genuine story that naturally allowed Smith to lead into these lessons if that makes sense(one point feels like it has been inserted so that Smith can explain about how a boy’s body works, that’s about the only time I felt like I was really being ‘taught’). Smith’s writing acts kind of a like a favourite adult from your childhood whose questions prompted you to think slightly further about your ideas on life.
As in many coming of age novels, not much happens, but everything happens. There are a few dramatic scenes, like the boys fight with some Pirus, but the book is more concerned with the relationship developing between the main characters than with drug deals and gang business. ‘Chameleon’ is clearly Shawn’s story and the other three boys are individually quite undeveloped, despite the detail provided about their family lives and Shawn’s control of the first person narrative means that the book is weighted towards him. On the other hand, their relationship with each other is fully examined, as Shawn experiences their growing friendship. Again I had an emotional moment over a simple, friendly show of support that happens towards the end of the book, because boys openly expressing what they mean to each other is a rare and special event in literature.
Let me take a moment to comment on the language. I’ve been waiting for a young adult novel that played around with language in a similar way to some adult novels and ‘Chameleon’ provides a little of the experimentation I love to see in novels. Smith is a master at integrating the techniques of young adult poetry into prose writing. He includes short blocks of one word sentences and uses onomatopoeias to provide an interesting sense of rapid action that the novel about passing a lazy summertime might otherwise lack. One of my favourite passages is:
‘Time stopped ticking. Sneakers stopped squeaking. Mouths stopped speaking as silence filled the park. The whisper of a breeze gave way to the whisper of net cords caressing the ball in a swish as it dropped back to earth.’
where Smith uses internal rhyme and a sense of rhythm that surprises, as it is unexpected to find poetry in a novel about daily life in the middle of a gang district. I suspect this is again Smith gently teaching his teen readers that poetry does not have to be like the kind Shawn has experienced, ‘All that “how do I love thee” nonsense.’
I clearly need to learn how to write shorter reviews, but how can you economise when there’s such a wonderful book to write about? I’m sure I’ll work it out one day.
If you’ve reviewed ‘Chameleon’ leave a link to your review in the comments and I’ll link to it at the bottom of this post. All other ‘Chameleon’ chat is also welcome in the comments.
Other Reviews
The Happy Nappy Bookseller
Reading in Color
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