The Out Questions
In Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, one of the questions that keeps getting asked is “are they out yet?” In fact, this first sentence of the book is “First you had to settle the question of out” (Whitehead 3). When I first read this it felt a little reminiscent of a coming out story of LGBTQ+ people. In a way Sag Harbor is a story of identifying with a community and really finding yourself there. This connects with how the first question they ask is always about outness. I also think the way the community functions with it being set in summer time plays into this question. There’s this excitement about who is still willing to come out to Sag Harbor and spend their summer there, and it shows who’s really proud of this part of their identity, which resonates similarly with coming out. A big aspect of this I think stems from pride of being in the Sag Harbor community. They talk about there being different generations such as when Benji comments how “Melanie’s family was first gene...