Novel analysis

• Early on in the novel, the Narrator recalls the story of the two boys mugged on the bridge. One lives, one dies. This moment comes up again while she is at dinner with her mother, discussing Tracey, and on a few other occasions. How does this event work as a metaphor for the relationship between chance, fate, and power structures? How might you apply this situation to an analysis of the relationship between Tracey’s mother and the Narrator’s mother, Narrator and Tracey, or Narrator and Aimee? Come up with an original thesis about these variables in any one relationship in the novel, starting at an entry point you like.

• A narrower iteration of the previous prompt: There are a few central discussions that indicate the crucial differences between the Narrator’s family and potential and Tracey’s family and potential. Many of these differences are articulated by the mothers themselves, especially so when the Narrator’s mother becomes a public political figure that serves the neighborhood and has Tracey as a constituent. What changes in Tracey and Narrator as they grow into adults? What does not? Is one “better off”, the other “worse”? What are the measurements one might use to make these assessments (income? prominence? family? love? health? dignity?) Construct an original thesis.

• There are a few crucial discussions between Aimee and Narrator that establish what “kind of person” each of them is when it comes to their assessment of history, their own potential, and the potential of others. Close read these dialogues and hold them up against how the two of them address their lives, from their romantic engagements, professional lives, creativity —you choose. Is one deluded and one correct? Are both simultaneously correct? Both deluded? A bit of both? (If so, which bits, how much, and how do you know?) Come up with an original thesis comparing and contrasting their approaches to the world.

• There are a few central discussions that indicate the crucial differences between the Narrator’s family and potential and Tracey’s family and potential. Many of these differences are articulated by the mothers themselves, especially so when Narrator’s mother becomes a public political figure that serves the neighborhood and has Tracey as a constituent. What changes in Tracey and Narrator as they grow into adults? What does not? Is one “better off”, the other “worse”? What are the measurements one might use to make these assessments (income? prominence? family? love? health? dignity?)

• Research the idea and history of “the tragic mulatta” and the “one drop rule”, and see how they figure in the lives of Tracey and Narrator as two biracial women in 80s-2000s England. How does race matter in their lives? Look up W.E.B. DuBois’ notion of “double consciousness” and see how it might apply. Come up with an original thesis about the figure of the mulatta and how it works in this novel.

• Write a research paper specifically on the relationship between minstrelsy, blackface, and tap dancing, with the films Swing Time, Ali Baba Goes to Town, and other visual texts that come in the novel as secondary texts. Look at the moments in which the Narrator analyzes these texts, and describe what the Narrator is trying to recover and celebrate from this history of performance. Is it recoverable? (I would suggest watching Spike Lee’s Bamboozled in its entirety.)

• Track Narrator’s growing descriptions and relationship with West Africa (Gambia, which goes unnamed). How does she react to her time there (perhaps in comparison to other characters like Aimee and Fern)? How do others treat her, and why? How does she negotiate her relationship with West Africa as the coast along which the largest slave ports stood? What is her status and condition as an African American in West Africa? (Think of the ways Lamin treats her upon her arrival, the things Hawa has to explain, the moments in which Fern knows more than she does, or is alarmed by her interpretation of events or circumstances.)

• The sexual vulnerability of girls and women is an ongoing concern throughout the novel. We see this in the scenes describing the “game” nine-year-old students play in school that ends in a situation that could have grown into assault, in the relationship between Tracey and her father, Aimee’s childhood, the young woman Narrator’s father finds in King Cross, and ultimately in the assessment of the safety of young women at the school Aimee has built in the Gambia. Trace these episodes (and others you may find) and create a thesis about the novel’s attitude toward power in relation to gender across time, place, race, and class (remember she also brings up the plantation, the Victorian workhouse…).

• The symbol of the Sankofa repeats itself toward the end of the novel in Kofi. In what way does Aimee’s building of the school in the Gambia and eventually adopting a beautiful child and bringing her to England constitute a “looking back”? Consider that in her interest in the historical, Narrator is always “looking back”, but this final moment breaks her own cycle of “cleaning up that tiny white woman’s life” for a particular reason. Why is this the last straw for Narrator? How is it historical? Why does what the Narrator does to avenge herself or remedy the situation not work?

Sample Solution