One Crazy Summer discussion

The book I read for this week was “One Crazy Summer” by Rita Williams-Garcia, which was a Newbery Honor Book. The book takes place in Oakland in the summer of 1968, where the eleven-year-old narrator Delphine and her two younger sisters, Fern and Vonetta, are visiting their absentee mother Cecile. The girls live back in Brooklyn with their father (Pa) and grandmother (Big Ma). The girls do not know what to expect with their mother but find her to be a cold and resentful of the girls being there with her, as she is a poet and printer for the black panthers. She has strict rules and does not let the girls into her kitchen and refuses to make dinner for them. The girls then go out during the day to the black power summer camp where they get free breakfast and learn about words such as “revolution”. The girls eyes become open to the “brothers and sisters” of the black panther and realize they are not as violent or frightening as they appear on the news or by Big Ma’s description. This book touches on a unique time period in our country's history telling the story of those who are not usually told. It also touches on the bond of sisters and the oldest becoming a mother to her siblings with an incompetent parent. Delphine slowly begins to break down the walls her mother puts up, such as beginning to cook in the kitchen for her siblings, listening to the radio, to finally reciting her mom's own poem at a black panther rally. This book would be especially great for young women of color to read, as well as a young person dealing with an absent parent.