Piecing Me Together

Piecing Me Together

by

Renée Watson

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Piecing Me Together makes teaching easy.

Jade Butler Character Analysis

The protagonist of the novel. Jade is a high school junior who loves Spanish. She’s black and overweight and she lives in a part of Portland that’s historically black and low-income. However, unlike other kids in Jade’s neighborhood, she buses across town to attend a predominantly-white private school called St. Francis. Since Jade is extremely smart and academic, she attends on a full scholarship. More than anything, Jade wants to go on the school’s study abroad service trip and help others, rather than always being the recipient of well-intentioned opportunities. She’s disappointed when Mrs. Parker nominates Jade for a mentorship program called Woman to Woman, seemingly instead of the study abroad program. When things happen to Jade that she doesn’t like or agree with, she often keeps what she wants to say inside. Because of this, she doesn’t alert the Woman to Woman organizers when her mentor, Maxine, doesn’t show up to the first meeting, and she never tells the organizers what she’d like out of the program. The program itself makes Jade feel broken and as though the program wants to fix her, something that Maxine exacerbates through her classist treatment. Jade does experience the bright spot of making a new friend at St. Francis, Sam. Sam is low income like Jade, which helps the girls to bond. However, since Sam is white, she struggles to empathize with Jade about instances of racism. Thanks to Jade’s friend Lee Lee, Jade begins to realize that if she doesn’t speak up for herself, she’ll never get what she wants. As Jade confronts Maxine, the Woman to Woman leaders, her Spanish teacher Mr. Flores, and finally Sam, she learns that it’s not that scary to ask for what she wants. She uses this lesson to organize a benefit event for Natasha Ramsey, a black teenager in a nearby city who was a victim of police brutality. Through this, Jade is able to find a sense of dignity and purpose and feel as though she can finally give back to her community. As a collage artist, Jade also learns to do this through her art, which she uses in a diaristic manner to process her emotions as well as to communicate her ideas to others.

Jade Butler Quotes in Piecing Me Together

The Piecing Me Together quotes below are all either spoken by Jade Butler or refer to Jade Butler. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Intersectionality, Identity, and Discrimination Theme Icon
).
Chapters 1 - 2 Quotes

I am learning to speak.

To give myself a way out. A way in.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker)
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

And then so many of my classmates nodded, like they could all relate. I actually looked across the room at the only other black girl in the class, and she was raising her hand, saying, “She took my answer,” and so I knew we’d probably never make eye contact about anything. And I realized how different I am from everyone else at St. Francis. Not only because I’m black and almost everyone else is white, but because their mothers are the kind of people who hire housekeepers, and my mother is the kind of person who works as one.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Mom
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

But girls like me, with coal skin and hula-hoop hips, whose mommas barely make enough money to keep food in the house, have to take opportunities every chance we get.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom, Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Of everything Mrs. Parker has signed me up for this one means the most. This time it’s not a program offering something I need, but it’s about what I can give.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“We want to be as proactive as possible, and you know, well, statistics tell us that young people with your set of circumstances are, well, at risk for certain things, and we’d like to help you navigate through those circumstances.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Parker (speaker), Jade Butler
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’d like you to thoroughly look over the information and consider it. This is a good opportunity for you.”

That word shadows me. Follows me like a stray cat.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mrs. Parker (speaker)
Page Number: 18-19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Oh, it’s a last-minute thing. Maxine called and asked if I wanted to do brunch with her to celebrate my birthday.”

Do brunch? You mean go to brunch?” Mom laughs. “How does one do brunch?” Mom pours milk into her mug, then opens a pack of sweetener and sprinkles it in. She stirs. “That woman has you talking like her already, huh?”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom (speaker), Maxine
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 17 - 18 Quotes

“It makes me feel like I’m learning a secret code or something. I don’t know. It’s powerful.”

“Powerful? Really?”

“Yes, all language is. That’s what you used to tell me.”

Dad puts his fork down. Leans back in his chair. “Me? I told you that?”

“Yes, when I was little. When it was story time and I didn’t want to stop playing to go read and you would tell me I ought to take every chance I get to open a book because it was once illegal to teach a black person how to read,” I remind him.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Dad (speaker), Sam, Maxine, Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 20 - 21 Quotes

Listening to these mentors, I feel like I can prove the negative stereotypes about girls like me wrong. That I can and will do more, be more.

But when I leave? It happens again. The shattering.

And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.

I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

And the other girl talks so bad about Northeast Portland, not knowing she is talking about Sam’s neighborhood. Not knowing you shouldn’t ever talk about a place like it’s unlivable when you know someone, somewhere lives there. She goes on and on about how dangerous it used to be, how the houses are small, how it’s supposed to be the new cool place, but in her opinion, “it’s just a polished ghetto.” She says, “God, I’d be so depressed if I lived there.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Kennedy/Glamour Girl, Josiah
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

She will be on the news every day because she is a white girl and white girls who go missing always make the news. [...] For months people will tell girls and women to be careful and walk in pairs, but no one will tell boys and men not to rape women, not to kidnap us and toss us into rivers. And it will be a tragedy only because Sam died in a place she didn’t really belong to. No one will speak of the black and Latino girls who die here, who are from here.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Maxine is full of ideas. “There are lots of free things too. I mean, even taking a drive to Multnomah Falls or going to Bonneville Dam.”

“Yeah, well, my mom doesn’t have a car, so there goes that idea,” I say. “And if she did, I’m sure she’d need to be conservative on where to drive in order to keep gas in the car.”

Maxine shakes her head at me. “Always the pessimist,” she says, laughing.

Always the realist, I think. Always the poorest.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mom
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 31 - 32 Quotes

“Kira—please leave Jade alone. She is not like that. She’s smart. She’s on scholarship at St. Francis and has a four-point-oh GPA. This girl right here is going places. She’s not going to mess things up by betting caught up with some guy,” she says. “I’m going to see to it she doesn’t end up like one of those girls.”

I know when Maxine says those girls, she is talking about the girls who go to Northside.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mom, Bailey, Kira
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 35 - 36 Quotes

“You hanging around all those uppity black women who done forgot where they came from. Maxine know she knows about fried fish. I don’t know one black person who hasn’t been to a fish fry at least once in their life. Where she from?”

Mom won’t stop talking. She goes on and on about Maxine and Sabrina and how they are a different type of black [...]

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom (speaker), Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

I haven’t spent much time with Sam. Partly because I usually have something to do after school, but mostly because I don’t know how to be around her when I know she doesn’t think that salesclerk treated me wrong. I don’t even think she feels the tension between us. She has moved on and acts like everything is fine, but me? I’m stuck wondering if I can truly be friends with someone who doesn’t understand what I go through, how I feel.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Lee Lee
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Everyone is so excited about Nathan’s announcement that the family check-in stops, and all Mrs. Winters can do is make plans for the baby shower. No one asks Maxine if she has any news. I can tell Maxine is hurt by this. Because when Mia says, “We should paint a mural in the baby’s nursery. That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it, Maxine?” Maxine says, “Yeah, sure. That would be awesome,” but her voice is flat and without emotion.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mia (speaker), Mrs. Winters, Nathan, Abby
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 42 - 43 Quotes

“But I don’t look up to Maxine,” I tell her. “She’s using me to feel better about herself. And her mother gave us all this food because she feels sorry for us. If that’s how you act when you have money, I’d rather stay poor.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Mom, Mrs. Winters
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

“You need to talk to whoever is in charge. Have you said anything to anyone?”

I don’t answer.

“They can’t read your mind. I mean, I get what you’re saying—some of that stuff is a little corny, and a lot of it is offensive. But I don’t know; what’s the better option? Stay silent, leave the program, and they never have a chance to do better?”

Related Characters: Lee Lee (speaker), Jade Butler, Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:

“All right, all right. I’ll think about it,” I tell Lee Lee. I don’t know why I never considered it before. Here I am, so focused on learning to speak another language, and I barely use the word I already know.

I need to speak up for myself. For what I need, for what I want.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Lee Lee, Sabrina
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

This conversation isn’t as intense as I thought it would be.

Maxine asks, “So what are some things Woman to Woman can do better?”

[...] “Well, I’d like to learn about real-life things—I mean, like you know, how to create a budget and balance a checkbook so I’ll know how much money I can spend and how much to put aside so the lights don’t get turned off,” I tell her.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Sabrina
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

I stare at the picture, can’t stop looking at her face, at how she looks like someone who lives in my neighborhood. Maybe she used to?

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), E.J., Natasha Ramsey
Page Number: 183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51 Quotes

When the star-filled sky blanketed him, did he ever think about what his life was like before the expedition? Before he was a slave? How far back could he remember? Did he remember existing in a world where no one thought him strange, thought him a beast?

Did he remember being human?

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom
Related Symbols: York
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh [...] and not be told I’m too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulous clouds without getting any special attention [...] At school I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black. All day I am on. And that’s why sometimes after school, I don’t want to talk to Sam or go to her house, because her house is a reminder of how black I am.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just want to be normal. I just want a teacher to look at me and think I’m worth a trip to Costa Rica. Not just that I need help but that I can help someone else.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 58 Quotes

“When I went to St. Francis, most people assumed that because I was black, I must be on scholarship.”

“I’m on scholarship,” I remind her.

“I know. But you were awarded a scholarship because you are smart, not because you are black,” Maxine says. “I got tired of people assuming things about me without getting to know me. [...] Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked on to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Kennedy/Glamour Girl, Josiah
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 215
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Piecing Me Together LitChart as a printable PDF.
Piecing Me Together PDF

Jade Butler Quotes in Piecing Me Together

The Piecing Me Together quotes below are all either spoken by Jade Butler or refer to Jade Butler. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Intersectionality, Identity, and Discrimination Theme Icon
).
Chapters 1 - 2 Quotes

I am learning to speak.

To give myself a way out. A way in.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker)
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

And then so many of my classmates nodded, like they could all relate. I actually looked across the room at the only other black girl in the class, and she was raising her hand, saying, “She took my answer,” and so I knew we’d probably never make eye contact about anything. And I realized how different I am from everyone else at St. Francis. Not only because I’m black and almost everyone else is white, but because their mothers are the kind of people who hire housekeepers, and my mother is the kind of person who works as one.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Mom
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

But girls like me, with coal skin and hula-hoop hips, whose mommas barely make enough money to keep food in the house, have to take opportunities every chance we get.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom, Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Of everything Mrs. Parker has signed me up for this one means the most. This time it’s not a program offering something I need, but it’s about what I can give.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 13
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“We want to be as proactive as possible, and you know, well, statistics tell us that young people with your set of circumstances are, well, at risk for certain things, and we’d like to help you navigate through those circumstances.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Parker (speaker), Jade Butler
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:

“I’d like you to thoroughly look over the information and consider it. This is a good opportunity for you.”

That word shadows me. Follows me like a stray cat.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mrs. Parker (speaker)
Page Number: 18-19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Oh, it’s a last-minute thing. Maxine called and asked if I wanted to do brunch with her to celebrate my birthday.”

Do brunch? You mean go to brunch?” Mom laughs. “How does one do brunch?” Mom pours milk into her mug, then opens a pack of sweetener and sprinkles it in. She stirs. “That woman has you talking like her already, huh?”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom (speaker), Maxine
Page Number: 60
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 17 - 18 Quotes

“It makes me feel like I’m learning a secret code or something. I don’t know. It’s powerful.”

“Powerful? Really?”

“Yes, all language is. That’s what you used to tell me.”

Dad puts his fork down. Leans back in his chair. “Me? I told you that?”

“Yes, when I was little. When it was story time and I didn’t want to stop playing to go read and you would tell me I ought to take every chance I get to open a book because it was once illegal to teach a black person how to read,” I remind him.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Dad (speaker), Sam, Maxine, Mrs. Parker
Page Number: 74
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 20 - 21 Quotes

Listening to these mentors, I feel like I can prove the negative stereotypes about girls like me wrong. That I can and will do more, be more.

But when I leave? It happens again. The shattering.

And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.

I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

And the other girl talks so bad about Northeast Portland, not knowing she is talking about Sam’s neighborhood. Not knowing you shouldn’t ever talk about a place like it’s unlivable when you know someone, somewhere lives there. She goes on and on about how dangerous it used to be, how the houses are small, how it’s supposed to be the new cool place, but in her opinion, “it’s just a polished ghetto.” She says, “God, I’d be so depressed if I lived there.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Kennedy/Glamour Girl, Josiah
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

She will be on the news every day because she is a white girl and white girls who go missing always make the news. [...] For months people will tell girls and women to be careful and walk in pairs, but no one will tell boys and men not to rape women, not to kidnap us and toss us into rivers. And it will be a tragedy only because Sam died in a place she didn’t really belong to. No one will speak of the black and Latino girls who die here, who are from here.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 98
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

Maxine is full of ideas. “There are lots of free things too. I mean, even taking a drive to Multnomah Falls or going to Bonneville Dam.”

“Yeah, well, my mom doesn’t have a car, so there goes that idea,” I say. “And if she did, I’m sure she’d need to be conservative on where to drive in order to keep gas in the car.”

Maxine shakes her head at me. “Always the pessimist,” she says, laughing.

Always the realist, I think. Always the poorest.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mom
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 31 - 32 Quotes

“Kira—please leave Jade alone. She is not like that. She’s smart. She’s on scholarship at St. Francis and has a four-point-oh GPA. This girl right here is going places. She’s not going to mess things up by betting caught up with some guy,” she says. “I’m going to see to it she doesn’t end up like one of those girls.”

I know when Maxine says those girls, she is talking about the girls who go to Northside.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mom, Bailey, Kira
Page Number: 130
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 35 - 36 Quotes

“You hanging around all those uppity black women who done forgot where they came from. Maxine know she knows about fried fish. I don’t know one black person who hasn’t been to a fish fry at least once in their life. Where she from?”

Mom won’t stop talking. She goes on and on about Maxine and Sabrina and how they are a different type of black [...]

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom (speaker), Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 40 Quotes

I haven’t spent much time with Sam. Partly because I usually have something to do after school, but mostly because I don’t know how to be around her when I know she doesn’t think that salesclerk treated me wrong. I don’t even think she feels the tension between us. She has moved on and acts like everything is fine, but me? I’m stuck wondering if I can truly be friends with someone who doesn’t understand what I go through, how I feel.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam, Lee Lee
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 41 Quotes

Everyone is so excited about Nathan’s announcement that the family check-in stops, and all Mrs. Winters can do is make plans for the baby shower. No one asks Maxine if she has any news. I can tell Maxine is hurt by this. Because when Mia says, “We should paint a mural in the baby’s nursery. That would be so much fun, wouldn’t it, Maxine?” Maxine says, “Yeah, sure. That would be awesome,” but her voice is flat and without emotion.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Mia (speaker), Mrs. Winters, Nathan, Abby
Page Number: 163
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapters 42 - 43 Quotes

“But I don’t look up to Maxine,” I tell her. “She’s using me to feel better about herself. And her mother gave us all this food because she feels sorry for us. If that’s how you act when you have money, I’d rather stay poor.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Mom, Mrs. Winters
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes

“You need to talk to whoever is in charge. Have you said anything to anyone?”

I don’t answer.

“They can’t read your mind. I mean, I get what you’re saying—some of that stuff is a little corny, and a lot of it is offensive. But I don’t know; what’s the better option? Stay silent, leave the program, and they never have a chance to do better?”

Related Characters: Lee Lee (speaker), Jade Butler, Maxine, Sabrina
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:

“All right, all right. I’ll think about it,” I tell Lee Lee. I don’t know why I never considered it before. Here I am, so focused on learning to speak another language, and I barely use the word I already know.

I need to speak up for myself. For what I need, for what I want.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine, Lee Lee, Sabrina
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 45 Quotes

This conversation isn’t as intense as I thought it would be.

Maxine asks, “So what are some things Woman to Woman can do better?”

[...] “Well, I’d like to learn about real-life things—I mean, like you know, how to create a budget and balance a checkbook so I’ll know how much money I can spend and how much to put aside so the lights don’t get turned off,” I tell her.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Sabrina
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes

I stare at the picture, can’t stop looking at her face, at how she looks like someone who lives in my neighborhood. Maybe she used to?

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), E.J., Natasha Ramsey
Page Number: 183
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 51 Quotes

When the star-filled sky blanketed him, did he ever think about what his life was like before the expedition? Before he was a slave? How far back could he remember? Did he remember existing in a world where no one thought him strange, thought him a beast?

Did he remember being human?

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Mom
Related Symbols: York
Page Number: 194
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 54 Quotes

Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh [...] and not be told I’m too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulous clouds without getting any special attention [...] At school I turn on a switch, make sure nothing about me is too black. All day I am on. And that’s why sometimes after school, I don’t want to talk to Sam or go to her house, because her house is a reminder of how black I am.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:

“I just want to be normal. I just want a teacher to look at me and think I’m worth a trip to Costa Rica. Not just that I need help but that I can help someone else.”

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Sam
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 58 Quotes

“When I went to St. Francis, most people assumed that because I was black, I must be on scholarship.”

“I’m on scholarship,” I remind her.

“I know. But you were awarded a scholarship because you are smart, not because you are black,” Maxine says. “I got tired of people assuming things about me without getting to know me. [...] Sometimes, in class, if something about race came up, I was looked on to give an answer as if I could speak on behalf of all black people,” Maxine says.

Related Characters: Jade Butler (speaker), Maxine (speaker), Kennedy/Glamour Girl, Josiah
Related Symbols: Portland
Page Number: 215
Explanation and Analysis: