X: A Novel

What does Malcolm resent and find phony during his time in Boston in the book, X: A Novel?

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Although Malcolm is initially excited by the hustle and bustle of the city and seeing interracial couples, he quickly becomes enamored with Roxbury and begins to view Sugar Hill as inauthentic. Townsend's Drug Store is a symbol of everything Malcolm dislikes about Sugar Hill. The traditional atmosphere of the soda fountain and the teenagers studying and socializing, even in mixed race groups, it is all too wholesome, and too phony for Malcolm. He believes everyone in Townsend's, and in Sugar Hill, is "putting on airs" (89) and remarks that in his experience, "you can be black and get all up with white folks, feeling like you're fitting in...[but] when you step outside, you're still a Negro" (90).

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X: A Novel