Child Abuse
Monday’s Not Coming follows 13-year-old Claudia, who returns from a summer away from home excited to start eighth grade with her best friend, Monday. But Monday doesn’t return Claudia’s calls or show up at school—and though Claudia spends the next several months searching tirelessly for Monday, it seems that nobody knows or cares where Monday went, or if she’s okay. The following spring, Claudia discovers that while she was gone over the summer…
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Family, Community, and Responsibility
Within weeks of starting school and not being able to locate her best friend, Monday, Claudia knows that something is wrong. But though Claudia throws herself into her project of finding Monday and asks teachers, counselors, her parents, and even the police for help, most people seem unconcerned about and uninterested in Monday’s disappearance. Several adults, including Claudia’s Daddy, even tell Claudia she shouldn’t be so curious or worried—whatever’s going on with Monday…
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Growing Up, Independence, and Friendship
When Claudia returns from spending the summer at her grandmother’s house and prepares to start eighth grade, she has a clear idea of what the next several years of her life will look like. She believes that she and her best friend, Monday, are going to survive eighth grade, be accepted into the prestigious Banneker High, and be by each other’s sides as they meet every challenge life has to offer. But when Monday…
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Secrecy and Shame
Both Monday and Claudia’s lives are marked by huge secrets that they perceive to be extremely shameful. Monday lives in an abusive household and doesn’t feel like she can tell anyone about the situation at home—she’s not only ashamed, she’s also afraid that social services might separate her and her siblings if they were to be placed in foster care. Claudia, meanwhile, has trouble reading and writing and seems to know that her troubles…
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Poverty, Social Support, and Desperation
Monday’s family’s poverty, as well as the impending closing of the Ed Borough housing projects, form the backdrop of Monday’s Not Coming. Claudia, as a relatively privileged narrator, doesn’t necessarily recognize the significance of Monday’s consistently threadbare clothes or what it might mean for Monday’s family to lose their home. The novel shows that poverty, desperation, and a dissolving community form the roots of Monday’s family’s problems and help create a closed-off…
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Memory, Repression, and Trauma
Monday’s Not Coming is told in three distinct timelines: “One Year Before the Before” takes place a year before Monday goes missing, “The Before” covers the year after Monday goes missing, and “The After” takes place two years after the police discover that Monday and August were murdered. However, this structure isn’t clear until the end of the book. As a result of the trauma of discovering her best friend was murdered, Claudia represses her…
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