We Love You, Charlie Freeman

We Love You, Charlie Freeman (2016), Kaitlyn Greenidge’s debut novel, examines America’s historical treatment of race and the ways in which we choose or don’t choose to confront and discuss it in today’s world. The book has received a number of literary award nominations such as New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award Nominee (2017) and The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Nominee for Shortlist (2016).

We Love You, Charlie Freeman is about an African-American family hired by a privately funded research institution to adopt a chimp and to teach him sign language. With well-crafted characters, the story moves between past and present as the exploitative history of the institute is revealed causing old collective wounds to open within the family. These fissures send lives spinning out of control. Charlotte, the main protagonist, propels the story forward. However, each character is carefully constructed and fleshed out.

The United States has a degrading history of comparing black people to monkeys in the early part of the twentieth century when exhibitors placed African Americans side by side with orangutans in zoos. Today, strong remnants of this history persist. This coming-of-age story explores race, politics, family, and hidden history, examining our wretched failure to talk openly about race.



Laurel Freeman, the headstrong matriarch of the Freeman family, has agreed to volunteer her entire family to be part of an unusual research project. The family has to agree to live with a new addition to the family, a baby chimpanzee called Charlie who was abandoned by his mother.

In 1990, Laurel, along with her husband, Charles, and their two daughters, fourteen-year-old Charlotte, and nine-year-old Callie have been invited to the Tonybee Institute to take part in this research project where, in addition to living with Charlie, they also have to teach him sign language, in which the family is fluent. They agree to be filmed as part of the experiment as well as studied by the institute’s researchers. They will leave their predominately black community in Dorchester, Massachusetts to move to a mansion in the Berkshires. Neither Charlotte nor Callie is keen about moving but before departing, Callie draws a card to welcome Charlie to the family, writing on it, “We Love You, Charlie Freeman.” These optimistic words inform the novel’s title. The family moves into an apartment on the institute’s campus. The Freeman’s are required to teach Charlie sign language as well as take him into their family fold. Conflict arises when Charlotte discovers the painful truth about the institute’s history of questionable studies.

The Toynbee Institute states that they are an ape research facility established in 1929. The family notices right away that the solicitous employees are all white. This lack of racial diversity concerns the family, especially Charlotte. It feels like something is off.



This marks the beginning of the Freeman’s racial nightmare. Charlotte and Callie are the first to sense that something is wrong with the experiment and their family’s part in it. Eventually, a daily routine is established. Charlotte’s father leaves each day to teach math at a local high school, and Charlotte and Callie go to school. While at school, Charlotte meets another black girl named Adia, whose mother teaches at the community college. Adia and her mother live by a credo of things that a black person should and should not do. Meeting Adia fuels Charlotte’s upset at the experiment her family is undergoing.

Charlotte and Adia soon begin a romantic relationship, becoming lovers. When Charlotte finds out that her mother is now breastfeeding Charlie, she confides her misgivings about the experiment with Adia. At this time, Charlotte also learns about a book that is to be published exposing the early racist-fueled history of Tonybee. Because of the book, Charlotte decides to confront the institute’s founder, Julia Tonybee-Leroy one night during dinner; however, Charlotte’s visiting uncle confronts Julia first. When dinner ends, a chasm opens up within the family, especially when Laurel’s breastfeeding is revealed.

Julia writes an open letter to all African-Americans outlining the true history of Toynbee and the parts of the book that she feels are not accurate. She explains why she opened the institute, to learn how to effectively communicate with chimpanzees because she suffered guilt after killing one while in the Congo long ago. She hired a researcher, Dr. Gardner, to head the projects, giving him complete latitude as long as he taught the chimps to communicate. Julia finally reveals that it was Dr. Gardner who conducted racist experiments without her knowledge or consent, such as comparing the genitalia of a woman with the genitalia of a female chimp. She asks not to be blamed but to be forgiven.



In the end, the experiment with Charlie is deemed a success, bringing more attention and prestige to the institute. Julia’s letter helps to leverage positive public opinion about the institute while the book is largely ignored. Charlotte is content to let things be in spite of her broken heart over the institution’s history. Adia, however, is outraged. The experience triggers Charlotte’s parents to divorce; her father remarries. Her mother continues at the institute, teaching sign language. Charlotte moves on to a new relationship with Darla. She returns to the institute once a year with Callie to visit with Charlie, now retired. During a dinner with her mother and sister, Callie announces her plans to travel to the Congo. Charlotte knows she will not return home.

Kaitlyn Greenidge originally hails from Boston and currently resides in Brooklyn. She received an MFA from Hunter College. She has received a Hertog Fellowship and the Bernard Cohen Short Story Prize. She was a Bread Loaf Scholar, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace artist, and a Johnson State College visiting writer. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Tottenville Review, Afrobeat Journal, Green Mountains Review, Fortnight Journal, At Length, Feminist Wire, and Believer.