Julie Sullivan’s new novel, ‘The World is Full of Champions,’ looks at class bias among Black Americans. It’s also a love story.

Julie Sullivan’s debut novel, The World is Full of Champions, takes a critical look at the chasm that exists between a fictional family from the Black elite in Philadelphia and their working-class maid and her family.

Part history, part saga, part Cain and Abel, and part romance novel, Champions tells a story that spans three decades of Georgia Smythe’s life.

Georgia’s mother works as a maid for the Whitmans, a judge and his wife who live in the Philadelphia suburbs. Georgia grows up playing with the Whitmans’ two sons. When she is 6, her father is killed in a mining accident.

As a young woman, Georgia falls in love with one of the Whitmans’ sons. But the upper-class parents prefer that he marry Claire, the daughter of their close friends, another professional couple who join them on vacations in Cape Cod.

Sullivan, the daughter of a Philadelphia icon, the Rev. Leon H. Sullivan — who led Zion Baptist Church in North Philadelphia for 38 years — knows firsthand the tensions that can simmer between Black people from different economic backgrounds.

That distinction became clearer after her father was named to the board of General Motors in 1971 — the first Black person named to a multinational corporate board in America. He helped develop the Sullivan Principles to work toward dismantling apartheid in South Africa.

Thus, the author had a window into the world of the Black elite. But she also had an understanding and deep immersion into the world of Black people struggling to make ends meet in North Philadelphia.

“I lived in both worlds,” she said. “I had a shoe in both worlds.”

A clinical assistant professor who teaches health-care ethics at Arizona State University, Sullivan is also the author of a nonfiction book, Against the Tide, about the life of her great-grandfather, a Black steamboat captain who battled prejudice in the Chesapeake Bay region.

She talked more about her first novel with The Inquirer.

There is a component of this book — but not its entirety — that addresses the juxtaposition of being the daughter of an international figure who had resources and status, with the humble and simple values of faith and persistence that he advocated in our household, and which were derived from his childhood in West Virginia.

My father never forgot where he came from. He saw himself as a ‘country boy,’ who grew up in poverty.

One definition of a champion is a person who has defeated or surpassed all rivals in a competition. That’s the definition most often used in Western society, and it often refers to people who, because of the sheer luck of the draw, have pathways to become known and well-regarded. But another definition of a champion is a person who fights or argues for a cause or on behalf of someone else.

It’s that second type of champion that interests me. They’re often not well known and are individuals who do not stand out because of their wealth or number of social media followers, but because they have fought hard battles and have survived. … People who stand up for the rights of marginalized communities (e.g. Black and native women, LGBTQ, children in war-torn areas). They are all champions, even though most are unknown.

Our family moved from Mount Airy to Rydal [in Abington Township,Montgomery County]. We had a bigger house, we went to summer camp, and we had a summer house on Cape Cod [like the characters in the book].

I remember thinking even as a child that other people should be able to have access to the same resources, and I applied that to my work as a professor and in my work in Africa. [Sullivan is the former executive director of IFESH, the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help, an organization her father founded that is no longer active.]

I also saw the warmth that could happen in families living in more modest circumstances, not based on wealth. One of my favorite memories was going to the house of one of my father’s best friends for Labor Day. Their house was small, and they put up little dining trays by the couch, but they squeezed a lot of people into their house. Those were happy times.

Most sibling rivalries occur in homes where there is a heightened sense of conflict, as well as increased competition. Both of those factors existed in the Whitman home. The biblical story of Cain and Abel is ultimately a fable of forgiveness and the ability to refashion oneself. This happens here also. The surviving brother is given a fresh start, or a second chance, to redeem himself.

And yes, I am making the case that African Americans who have reached a level of achievement where they are not food or housing insecure have a responsibility to help the Black poor, rather than distancing themselves from them.

My father’s grandfather and his great-grandfather both died in the coal mines of West Virginia. I think that’s why, when he started the OIC [Opportunities Industrialization Center] in West Virginia, he talked about how it is important for poor white people, as well as poor Black people, to have job training and better opportunities.

Like Georgia, I was mortified. My family and I were living in Chestnut Hill. I was 24 at the time. The MOVE burning affected me greatly. It was a horrific taste of how the machinations of law and order could unleash cruelty on innocent victims. I fervently watched the news and was moved by the loss of life by fire, particularly the five children.

The police deciding to ‘let the fire burn’ was horrific. I remember seeing the compound engulfed in smoke. I believe that the mayor at the time, Wilson Goode, who is a good man, was nonetheless misinformed and made ill-informed decisions driven by uncaring people in the [police] force.

I knew several people in the church who were gay but closeted. From what I could see, they led tortured lives, in part, because of the pressure the Black church exerted on them to fulfill their manhood in an environment of oppression. I wanted to address the fact that gay people, particularly men, should not feel ashamed of who they are.

I believe that I did want to speak out as an advocate for those who are mistreated because of their sexual identity.

I did want the book to end on a hopeful note, because I feel as though social media and the weight, for poor Blacks, of being the underdog — their culture, food, music, and dance appropriated by any or all — have already excavated and mined the sadness. I believe that [the next generation of children in the story] are models of the future.