Opening
Delphine Gaither’s summer tilts from humiliation to hard-won agency as her authority at home collapses, a fragile bond with her mother flickers to life, and a daring getaway to San Francisco ends in sirens. With each choice, Delphine steps further into responsibility and voice, even as the world around her tightens.
What Happens
Chapter 21: Eating Crow
The morning after Delphine Gaither tells Sister Mukumbu the sisters won’t be returning to the Center, Cecile Johnson (Nzila) confronts her. Delphine explains she’s afraid of police violence around the Panthers; Cecile is dismissive and asks if anyone has actually hurt them. She orders the girls to get dressed and go back for breakfast. When Delphine tries to compromise—Center, yes; rally, no—Cecile shuts her down and snaps that Delphine sounds like Big Ma. The comparison to her own mother ignites Cecile’s anger more than anything Delphine says.
On the walk to the Center, Vonetta Gaither and Fern Gaither needle their sister for the failed power play. Delphine calls the feeling “eating crow,” swallowing her pride in front of everyone. Inside, Sister Mukumbu welcomes them without judgment. At recess, Eunice Ankton sizes up Delphine and guesses the stunt was “showing off.” Bristling turns into kinship as they trade the burdens of being the oldest. Delphine discovers Eunice is more grounded than arrogant, and a thin thread of friendship eases the sting of the morning.
Chapter 22: Itsy Bitsy Spider
At home, Vonetta drills Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool,” trying on its cool, “shiftless” swagger for her rally solo. The repetition grates on Delphine until Cecile storms in and dismisses the piece—boasting she “coulda knocked that out in my sleep”—and belittles the poet. Vonetta, hungry for praise, deflates on the spot.
Feeling mean, Delphine twists the knife: “You’re just like her.” To prove it, she pitches a scenario about the theme of Family, Motherhood, and Abandonment: would Vonetta choose a star turn as TV’s Tinker Bell or show up at her daughter Lootie Belle’s school talent show? Vonetta picks TV without blinking—her daughter, she argues, would be proud of a famous mother. Fern swoons at the fantasy of a “colored fairy mother,” but Delphine hears selfishness that mirrors Cecile’s. The quarrel swells until Cecile stomps back in and orders silence, leaving the sisters’ rift raw and unresolved.
Chapter 23: Movable Type
The next evening, Delphine finds a secondhand stool by the stove—a quiet invitation to “sit down and be there.” It echoes the Brooklyn kitchen before Fern was born, before Cecile left. After dinner, Cecile surprises her again: come help with the press. She scrubs Delphine’s hands and opens the world of backward letters—movable type.
Cecile shows a fresh poem, “Movable Type,” signed Nzila, ending: “Pack light. Leave swift. / I’m that type. / I move.” The words announce a life in motion, yet the humming kitchen feels like a dock she keeps returning to. Cecile teaches Delphine to feed paper and turn the crank. Delphine jitters with the fear of ruining it and leaves a tiny flaw. Cecile calls it “a waste of paper,” but the lesson—skill shared, space shared—lands as their most intimate exchange yet, a careful step toward Delphine’s Coming of Age.
Chapter 24: San Francisco Treat
Determined to make the most of California, Delphine plots a secret Saturday “excursion.” She maps bus lines, lists sights—Chinatown, cable car, Fisherman’s Wharf—and tells her sisters to let her do the talking. She asks Cecile for money for their “all-day activities.” Suspicious but uninterested in details, Cecile hands over eleven dollars and some change and warns them not to get into trouble.
At the door, Hirohito Woods’s go-kart whistles past, tugging Vonetta and Fern off-task until Delphine herds them out. The bus pulls them beyond their Oakland block, and delight takes over. Fern—without Miss Patty Cake—presses her face to the glass and suddenly squeals, “I saw something,” turning it into a private song she won’t share. The secret feels like proof: they’re out in the world on their own terms.
Chapter 25: Wish We Had a Camera
San Francisco erupts in color—hippies swirl, and a “Flower Girl” tucks daisies into Fern’s and Vonetta’s hands. The sisters answer with “Power to the people” and “Free Huey,” fluent now in the city’s slogans. Chinatown’s dragon-arched streets offer dumplings and fortune cookies, until a tall, blond family stares and snaps photos, making Delphine bristle. The girls hop a cable car and rattle downhill to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Sea air and gulls lift them—until a gift shop clerk tracks them with suspicion. Delphine squares her shoulders: “We are citizens, and we demand respect,” then leads her sisters out, choosing dignity and affirming her Identity and Self-Discovery. They buy postcards from a kinder vendor and head home buzzing with triumph. The bus lets them off to a nightmare: police cars ring the green stucco house. On the sidewalk, they watch Cecile and two Panthers in handcuffs, joy draining into a cold, new uncertainty.
Character Development
Small humiliations, small mercies, and one perfect day recalibrate the sisters’ roles—especially Delphine’s—just before the arrest forces childhood to contract again.
- Delphine: Her authority collapses at home, but she claims leadership by planning and executing the San Francisco trip. At the press, she accepts instruction without surrendering pride, and in the gift shop she wields movement language to demand respect.
- Cecile: She rejects conventional mothering yet invites Delphine into her craft, revealing tenderness in work and words. Her poem declares motion as identity, and her arrest anchors her commitment to Social Justice and Activism.
- Vonetta: She craves the spotlight, then withers when Cecile won’t applaud. Her quick choice of stardom over mothering exposes a self-focus Delphine reads as Cecile-like.
- Fern: She loosens from Delphine’s shadow, keeps a private delight on the bus (“I saw something”), and navigates the city with widening confidence.
Themes & Symbols
Motherhood sits in uneasy tension with art and activism. Through the “Lootie Belle” scenario and Cecile’s choices, the story probes Family, Motherhood, and Abandonment: what does a mother owe, and what happens when her calling lies elsewhere? Cecile’s fleeting gestures—the stool, the lesson at the press—offer a nontraditional intimacy based on shared space and craft rather than hugs and praise.
Delphine’s Coming of Age hinges on action: planning routes, protecting sisters, confronting bias. Her public assertion at the wharf signals a self taking shape, intertwined with a political vocabulary. That braided growth—private identity into public speech—defines her arc of Identity and Self-Discovery.
Symbols clarify the stakes. The printing press embodies Cecile-as-Nzila: the machine that stamps voice into the world, its “movable type” mirroring her refusal to be fixed in place. San Francisco becomes a postcard of freedom—daisies, dumplings, cable car clang—so the image can shatter against the flashing red and blue back in Oakland.
Key Quotes
“You’re just like her.”
Delphine’s jab collapses sisterly bickering into a generational accusation. By equating Vonetta’s hunger for attention with Cecile’s, Delphine frames selfishness as an inheritable pattern—and reveals her own simmering hurt.
“Pack light. Leave swift. / I’m that type. / I move.”
Nzila’s closing lines from “Movable Type” read like a manifesto. The poem names motion as virtue and defense, explaining Cecile’s past departures even as she roots—briefly—in the press’s steady rhythm.
“We are citizens, and we demand respect.”
Delphine borrows the movement’s cadence to claim space in a hostile store. It’s not mimicry but application: a child turns lessons into protection, marrying politics to personal dignity.
“I saw something.”
Fern’s private exclamation signals an inner life budding beyond her sisters’ reach. The secret joy marks her own small step toward autonomy.
“I coulda knocked that out in my sleep.”
Cecile’s dismissal wounds Vonetta and exposes Cecile’s complicated relationship with praise, art, and the girls’ need for approval. It underscores the gulf between the mother’s standards and her daughters’ longing.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters crest the novel’s rising action by pairing intimacy with rupture. The press scene offers the first sustained, skill-sharing closeness between mother and daughter; the San Francisco trip delivers unfiltered childhood joy and competence. Both are immediately set against the blunt force of the arrest, which yanks the sisters back into danger and responsibility. The contrast locks in the book’s central tension: private coming of age colliding with public struggle, and a daughter learning to stand—quickly, and for real—when the ground moves under her.