The novel One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, though an example of the literature for youth, discusses the essential problems of the adult world. The book is about becoming mature and, thus, aims to make the readers grow-up, encountering the problems which are otherwise out of the children’s scope. In this essay, several important themes of the novel will be investigated. Among them, the role of trauma, hope, and home in the protagonists’ lives will be discussed; belief about childhood encoded in the novel will be revealed. In conclusion, the analysis will be followed by a note of critique about the potential of the novel in terms of the socio-cultural, ethical, and emotional education of the children.
The Roles of Trauma, Hope, and Home in the Novel
The main characters of the book, three sisters Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern, aged respectively eleven, nine, and seven, leave their permanent home in Brooklyn for visiting their alienated mother, who lives in Oakland, California. In their home, girls stay with their father and paternal grandmother Big Ma, surrounded by the atmosphere of comfort and love. Coming to their mother’s house, they start facing a completely different life, realizing that the reality around them is not filled with childish interests, little pleasures, and sorrows, but with serious adult problems. Moreover, they suddenly become themselves involved in this “big life,” which shocks them and makes them feel uncomfortable and lost. Their home is no more accessible to the sisters; only in thoughts, they still permanently refer to their “guards,” father and Big Ma. However, along with it, they start to adjust to a new “home,” which is much wider than their private living sector. The children realize this fact as they continue visiting the People’s Center and get acknowledged with Black Panthers.
Such a change in their environment, ideas, as well as loss of safety feeling might be considered as an initial trauma if there would be no earlier one. The absence of a mother since childhood could not avoid affecting girls’ feelings. “Mommy gets up to give you a glass of water in the middle of the night. Mom invites your friends inside when it’s raining. Mama burns your ears with the hot comb,” while they may only imagine it, not having any one of those “Mommy, Mom, Mama, or Ma” (Williams-Garcia). As they come to know Cecile, closer, their tiny hope of experiencing motherly care, warm love, and safety vanishes completely. From the first seconds, Cecile sets her rules for them: “Y’all have to move if you’re going to be with me” (Williams-Garcia). This lady, with “man-size steps,” smoking man-type cigarettes, and having man-like ideas about something unfamiliar to them – politics, social rights, antiracist movement, fails to become the children’s friend.
However, though the search for some qualities, which are usually associated with mother, seems hopeless, there is something that is still left for the children. Throughout the novel, the girls are not able to establish contact with Cecile. They are afraid of her and avoid her, yet, towards the end, waiting for her to be released from the jail, they clean her kitchen, “because it should look right when Cecile comes home tomorrow” (Williams-Garcia). At the final point of the novel, Cecile – their mother – gives children a hug before their living.
Beliefs About Childhood Encoded in the Novel
The central theme of the novel is the idea of becoming mature, understanding the real matters of the social world. Therefore, it seems, the author believes that childhood is the most important time for setting an appropriate worldview of the young people, imbedding the right ideas into their character. In her poem, Cecile tells about “black nation,” to which she gave the birth, as “spilled forth to be stolen, shackled, dispersed” (Williams-Garcia). Indeed, historically the Black Panther party, to which Cecile belonged, gave great importance to children’s ideological education. Party members were “feeding the children and educating them with revolutionary doctrine” in the same way as it was happening in the novel at the People’s Center (Wilson).
Furthermore, education has to cover not only the social field, such as anti-discriminatory ideas but also the concept of gender equality. Historically, the antiracist struggle was accompanied by the black feminist movement, though the problems of the race and gender were to be solved simultaneously (Umoja et al.). In the novel, seeing Delphine in the kitchen cooking for her sisters, Cecile comments: “We’re trying to break
yokes. You’re trying to make one for yourself… You wouldn’t be so quick to pull the plow” (Williams-Garcia). Though said in an excessively uneven tone, this message had its reason; thus, it was imprinted into the daughter’s mind.
An Original Analysis of the Novel’s Potential in Regards to Critical Literacy
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia is one of the books that are able to touch the mind and heart of the young audience. The style of it allows children to get acknowledged with serious social, political, and ethical problems, causing their compassion to the events of the story, as its protagonists are of the same age as them. In addition, this novel educates the youth in the historical sense, as its fictional characters act in real historical circumstances. All these characteristics make the book one of the best examples of the genre.
Works Cited
Umoja, Akinyele, et al. Black Power Encyclopedia: From “Black is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings. 2 vols. ABC-CLIO, 2018.
Williams-Garcia, Rita. One Crazy Summer. HarperCollins ebooks, 2009. HarperCollins Publishers, Web.
Wilson, Jamie J. The Black Panther Party: A Guide to an American Subculture. ABC-CLIO, 2018.