Mentorship, Opportunity, and Dignity Theme Analysis

Because Jade is a poor young black woman who’s extremely focused on doing well in school, she is the recipient of many opportunities meant to help her succeed or expose her to things she wouldn’t otherwise get the chance to experience. While Jade fully understands how important and beneficial these opportunities are, she also resents them. She tells the reader that, “girls like [her], 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 [they] get.” Essentially, Jade suggests that if she wants to do well and eventually get out of Portland, she has to smile and accept every offer of help that comes her way, no matter how demeaning, racist, or silly those offers might seem. As Jade navigates the Woman to Woman mentorship program and engages with other mentor figures in her life, the novel shows clearly that if these programs and other types of opportunities targeted at young people like Jade are to have the desired effect, they must honor the dignity of the recipients. For this to happen, mentors must view their mentees as full people with thoughts and desires of their own—not as broken people in need of fixing, or as status symbols that allow mentors to prove their sympathetic and generous natures.

Jade is extremely offended when Mrs. Parker, her guidance counselor, calls her in to tell her about the Woman to Woman mentorship program. From the moment Jade learns about the meeting, she hopes that Mrs. Parker is going to tell her that she’s been nominated to go on the service learning trip to Costa Rica. Importantly, Jade wants to go on the Costa Rica trip because it’s a service trip—that is, a chance for her to help others. More than anything, Jade wants to be seen as a person who has something to give and a choice in what she accepts from others. The Costa Rica trip would give her a rare chance to give back and feel normal—while the Woman to Woman program makes Jade feel as though she was only nominated because she’s black and poor. In describing the program, however, Mrs. Parker notes that if Jade completes the program, she’ll earn a scholarship to any Oregon college. Because of this, Jade feels like she has no choice but to accept—she knows (and her mom notes at several points) that Jade has few other options when it comes to affording college. However, this doesn’t change the fact that Jade still feels demeaned by the program, as well as by the fact that she has so few opportunities that don’t feel demeaning. To Jade, the program seems designed to make people like Mrs. Parker and like Jade’s Woman to Woman mentor, Maxine, feel good about themselves by lifting up young women they see as broken and disadvantaged.

This all becomes increasingly difficult for Jade to bear as she wades into the program and gets to know Maxine. Mrs. Parker chose Maxine as Jade’s mentor because Maxine is also black, attended St. Francis, and has since graduated from college. Though everyone involved seems to think that this means Maxine and Jade will get along well, Maxine makes Jade feel small and unimportant from the start by constantly taking calls from her ex-boyfriend and regularly skipping scheduled outings and activities. These choices make Jade feel disrespected—and in some ways, as though she has more to teach Maxine about “loving herself” (which is the topic of one of the Woman to Woman program’s seminars) than Maxine has to teach Jade. Unwittingly or not, Maxine and the program at large impose what they think their mentees need on the mentees, rather than asking the mentees what they want out of the program. This results in a questionably useful seminar on self-love, as well as outings to local Portland cultural events and attractions that, while fun and interesting, Jade doesn’t find especially useful. What she hoped to get out of the program were practical lessons, such as how to make a budget and succeed as a young black woman in college, not just meals out and trips to the symphony.

Because of Maxine and Woman to Woman’s disregard for the mentees, Jade comes away from most Woman to Woman events feeling as though the organization—and Maxine in particular—think that she’s broken. This begins to change when Jade finally begins to speak up for herself and ask for what she wants out of the program—and has the opportunity to give back to others in a way that empowers Jade and her peers. Jade eventually works up the courage to tell Maxine how hurtful her behavior is and to share with Maxine what she’d like out of the program. Maxine not only agrees to change her behavior to be more respectful of Jade, but she also takes Jade’s concerns about the program to the people in charge, something that leads to programming that’s far more useful and meaningful to the mentees than what the organization had planned without their input. In short, Maxine finally begins to listen to what Jade wants rather than forcing Jade to sit through what Maxine and the program think 17-year-old girls need.

Even more meaningful, however, is the way that Maxine and Woman to Woman rally to help Jade and her friends Sam and Lee Lee organize a benefit art show and poetry reading for the family of Natasha Ramsey, a young black girl who suffered police brutality. The girls plan the whole thing themselves before even asking for help, and this event gives all three of them a sense of dignity, purpose, and confidence. Through the turnaround in Maxine’s behavior and the benefit event in particular, Piecing Me Together suggests that help for young people like Jade is only productive and effective when it gives them agency, control, and dignity—if help doesn’t actually empower those it’s supposed to, or it makes them feel inferior, it isn’t help at all.