112 pages • 3 hours read
Jesmyn WardA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown
Introduction by Jesmyn Ward
“Homegoing, AD” by Kima Jones
“The Weight” by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
“Lonely in America” by Wendy S. Walters
“Where Do We Go from Here?” by Isabel Wilkerson
“‘The Dear Pledges of Our Love’: A Defense of Phillis Wheatley’s Husband” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
“White Rage” by Carol Anderson
“Cracking the Code” by Jesmyn Ward
“Queries of Unrest” by Clint Smith
“Blacker Than Thou” by Kevin Young
“Da Art of Storytellin’ (a Prequel)” by Kiese Laymon
“Black and Blue” by Garnette Cadogan
“The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning” by Claudia Rankine
“Know Your Rights!” by Emily Raboteau
“Composite Pops” by Mitchell S. Jackson
“Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha Trethewey
“This Far: Notes on Love and Revolution” by Daniel José Older
“Message to My Daughters” by Edwidge Danticat
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Garnette Cadogan’s essay begins with two epigraphs: one from Fats Waller’s song “(What Did I do to Be So) Black and Blue?” and the other from Walt Whitman’s “Manhattan’s Streets I Saunter’d, Pondering.” Cadogan walked around his hometown of Kingston, Jamaica, at night during childhood. Warring political factions made the streets dangerous for everyone. During these walks, Cadogan made friends with and took advice from other walkers. He writes, “I imagined myself as a Jamaican Tom Sawyer” (130), and his fantasies turned the night from a treacherous place into an exciting one. He found solace in the streets, removed from threats of his stepfather’s abuse.
He developed skills as Kingston’s “nighttime cartographer” (131), learning its unwritten rules, patterns, and neighborhoods divided by class. He saw homes of all kinds, from mansions to shacks, as he walked down the hills of the city and found more activity in poorer neighborhoods. As a preteen, he developed his after-dark walking habit and sometimes stayed out until sunrise, to his mother’s dismay.
Cadogan lived in New Orleans for college, and he expected to walk just as extensively, immersing himself in the city’s distinctive cultural blend. Staffers at his college warned him against walking in crime-ridden areas, but Kingston was considered much more dangerous, statistically, so Cadogan dismissed their warnings.
By Jesmyn Ward