Safe Colors: A Novel in Short Fictions

by Thaddeus Rutkowski

Thaddeus Rutkowski's Safe Colors is a novel that tells the story of a biracial boy who grows up in Northern Appalachia and moves as a young adult to New York City. One of the driving forces in his life is the desire to fit in as a person of color in a white society. Further complicating matters is a childhood spent in a difficult family situation. The boy's Polish American father is a frustrated artist who drinks too much, while his Chinese immigrant mother works outside the home, away from the father and children. Over the years, the family shrinks and splits, but the surviving members eventually come back together to rally around their ailing mother.

Genres: Fiction

280 pages, Paperback

Published October 3, 2023

About the author

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse. Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution’s fiction best-seller list. All three books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and at the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York. His writing has appeared in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Fiction and Fiction International. He received a 2012 fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Reviews

[Amy Barone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Safe Colors was an entertaining read, commingling humor, irony, poignancy, and truths. I enjoyed the mini fictions and savored several stories every morning. I was disappointed to reach the end. Author Thaddeus Rutkowski has a strong voice and it came through beautifully here.

[Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant novel that reads like a memoir with multiple scenes polished to carry a similar tone, as in a dream. It invites readers to step inside its silences and gaps that yawn wide like doorways and to try to slide the puzzle pieces or balance two ends of an equation that never quite reconcile.

The father wants to “live apart from society” but can’t escape the nation within whose borders he still lives. He clings to his own racial self-understanding and sees his children’s interests as oil to his water. He doesn’t know how to guide his children because he doesn’t know how to guide himself.

And the child waits to be seen accurately by others at least as much as he actively tries to understand himself. (More of my reaction on Medium.)

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a number of reasons for recommending this book: its structural device of writing a life through accumulated flash fictions, its surfacing of homophobia as something inflicted on straight men as a form of xenophobia; its revelation of how our POV (and the tone in which we share it) shifts depending upon the time of life we're narrating. This last part especially struck me as "Safe Colors" author Thaddeus Rutkowski progressed from an almost PTSD dissociative voice for childhood to an ebullient confessor for the post-collegiate years to something between op-ed and stand-up for the final section (which might be subtitled "The Bicycle Essays"). An honesty and self-deprecation informs this novel no matter the narrator's age or his intent (confession, humor, self-analysis) which only partially explains this novel's ability to keep one deeply engaged. And I say that as someone who read "Safe Colors" in one single airborne sitting on a dreadfully rocky flight from NYC to PDX. If you're looking for a paperback to keep your mind on something besides how much the plane's cabin is shaking in a rainstorm, "Safe Colors" will more than do the trick.

[Fran Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thaddeus Rutkowski has an amazing and original voice.
It's also a very difficult, painful voice and story to read.

At first glance, the narration seems straightforward, Hemingwayesque, "just the facts, ma'am" -- but underneath that deceptive simplicity, Rutkowski reveals a profound portrait of American culture.

In a series of short set pieces, this book tells the semi-autobiographical story of an Asian-Polish young man who grows up in rural Pennsylvania and then moves to NYC to try to carve out a career through writing and teaching. Always the outsider and usually on the cusp of financial insecurity, the narrator infuses his deadpan observations with bits of wry humor and tender love for his wife and daughter. (His constantly-breaking down old bike is a wonderful recurring theme and metaphor!)

For me, too many of the chapters felt repetitious. But that may have been intentional. This book does not sugarcoat anything, and perhaps the author wanted to really drum into the reader's head the unending pain, loneliness, and difficulty of the narrator's life.

In any case, this book proves that a fiction writer doesn't need fancy streams of adjectives to send a powerful message.

[Gila Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

While Rutkowski's hero fumbles forward, struggling to make even the most basic connections, the author succeeds in connecting him to the reader in his own blur-the edges-style. This is a character/location driven work; the peel is slowly removed—in bite-sized chunks--to reveal the author's heartfelt message about childhood, family, growing up and growing old. Highly recommend!

[Deborah Clearman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, terse vignettes paint a profound and moving portrait of a life.