65 pages • 2 hours read
Ibi ZoboiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
“Half a Moon” by Renée Watson
“Black Enough” by Varian Johnson
“Warning: Color May Fade” by Leah Henderson
“Black. Nerd. Problems.” by Lamar Giles
“Out of the Silence” by Kekla Magoon
“The Ingredients” by Jason Reynolds
“Oreo” by Brandy Colbert
“Samson and the Delilahs” by Tochi Onyebuchi
“Stop Playing” by Liara Tamani
“Wild Horses, Wild Hearts” by Jay Coles
“Whoa!” by Rita Williams-Garcia
“Gravity” by Tracey Baptiste
“The Trouble With Drowning” by Dhonielle Clayton
“Kissing Sarah Smart” by Justina Ireland
“Hackathon Summers” by Coe Booth
“Into the Starlight” by Nic Stone
“The (R)evolution of Nigeria Jones” by Ibi Zoboi
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Makenzie “Mak” Taylor is a Black girl who lives in North Atlanta. Because her father is a banker and her mother an attorney, they live in the wealthy part of Atlanta with a large home and gated property. She attends a mostly white, wealthy school.
Mak is at the Starlight drive-in theatre in the backseat with a boy, Kamari Funderburke. As they kiss, she thinks about the fact that she had promised her mom that she would never come here. Her mom tells her that it is a place where kids come to have sex and do drugs, and “not a place for nice young ladies like her” (345).
She thinks back to the first time she saw Kamari when she drove by with her cousin, Crystal, and he was leaving the Starlight. Crystal’s family lives in the poorer area of Atlanta, which her mom refers to regularly as “the ghetto,” in a small home with a large family. Her mother often looks down on her sister Trish (Crystal’s mom) and their situation, telling Mak that Trish had no desire to break the cycle and instead continues to live in poverty. Despite this, Mak notes how Crystal is much smarter than she is, with plans to attend Duke on a full scholarship.
By Ibi Zoboi