Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Piecing Me Together, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Intersectionality, Identity, and Discrimination
The Power of Language
Mentorship, Opportunity, and Dignity
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Jade wakes up early the next morning. There’s nothing to eat for breakfast, so she drinks a glass of water and catches the 35 bus that will take her out of her neighborhood. Jade lives in the New Columbia, and no one lets her forget that it used to be public housing for shipyard workers in World War II, and that the units were all rundown by the 1980s. Though many people can’t find beauty in Jade’s neighborhood, Jade can. Since elementary school, she’s been picking up magazines, candy wrappers, and receipts to make beautiful, unexpected collages. Jade says the collages are like her: ordinary. But Jade is going to make something of her life, both for herself and for Mom. Mom had Jade when she was 16 and so she couldn’t go to college. Jade’s Dad, however, turned his life around after Jade’s birth. He now has a rich white fiancée.
Again, not having anything in the house for breakfast drives home Jade’s poverty. However, it’s significant that Jade clearly loves her neighborhood: she sees it as beautiful and she wants to help others see it the same way by making collages about it. Though Jade hasn’t quite made the connection yet, her collages are another way in which she can communicate with people and express her point of view. However, she hasn’t gotten there yet because at this point, she’s focused on learning Spanish and going on the study abroad trip.
Themes
On the bus, Jade thinks about how she’s the answer to Dad’s prayers and she is also Mom’s deferred dream. The bus moves through the transition blocks between North Portland and Northeast. At one stop, a thin white girl gets on. She looks young and Jade wonders if she’s going to St. Francis. They get off at the same stop and Jade thinks that she would’ve noticed this girl before, since Jade is one of the few students at St. Francis who buses in. There are only a few other black students: Rose is nice but a year older, and Josiah is a cool, popular tech nerd. He’s nice when Jade tutors him but he uses a lot of slang around his white friends. Josiah invites Jade to join friends for lunch out, but Jade refuses—she wants to say yes but she can’t miss this meeting with Mrs. Parker.
Jade’s reference to herself as Mom’s “deferred dream” is a reference to Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” which opens by asking what happens to a dream deferred. Tapping into Hughes’s poetry shows again that Jade has a firm grasp of language and she understands how to use all different sorts of language to get her ideas across. At this point, though, Jade isn’t sharing any of this language, which means that no one but the reader is privy to her thoughts and desires.
Themes
