Avery Character Analysis

In “The Sukiyaki Book Club,” Avery is a young girl who gets stuck upside down on the monkey bars; she spends the entirety of the story panicking and trying to find a way to call for help or get herself safely to the ground. Avery’s mother died recently in a car accident in which Avery was a passenger. Though Avery doesn’t say so explicitly, she seems to struggle in the aftermath of her mother’s death, notably due to Avery’s father’s inability to cope with death himself and provide adequate support to his young, grieving daughter. Eventually, the reader learns that “The Sukiyaki Book Club” is a framed narrative: in fact, Avery is a character in a story the unnamed writer (perhaps a stand-in for Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil’s author), whose story is told alongside Avery’s, is currently working on. The unnamed writer laments “not know[ing] how to rescue Avery gently” and fears that Avery’s story can only end in tragedy. This seems to be a dismal nod to the ways that systemic racism and inequality rob Black youths (like Avery, and like the unnamed narrator’s children) of the innocence that children with more privilege are free to enjoy. After the unnamed writer observes her own children’s “small brown bodies” appear so carefree as they sing and dance in the shower, she ends Avery’s story on an unexpectedly happy note: Avery lets go of the monkey bars and miraculously manages to land upright, unharmed. This suggests that though children like Avery and the unnamed writer’s children may experience hardship and injustice, they can persevere and feel happiness and hope for a better, more just future.