Jade, a high school student, loves language. She’s dedicated to learning Spanish and wants to go on her school’s yearly service learning trip to Costa Rica for the language experience, as well as for the opportunity to help others. Further, Jade characterizes language—and a foreign language like Spanish in particular—as something freeing: she believes that as a bilingual person, she’ll have many more opportunities at success later in life. However, as the novel progresses, Jade comes to realize that while her characterization of Spanish as freeing may be correct, it nevertheless represents a somewhat narrow view of the power of language and what it can do. Ultimately, Jade learns that all forms of language—English and Spanish, spoken and written, as well as creative and poetic—can be freeing, if only she’s willing to use them to express herself and speak up for what she wants. On the other hand, remaining silent is a surefire way to feel isolated, unheard, and unmoored.
As the novel is written from Jade’s perspective, readers get a close look at Jade’s inner monologue. On Jade’s first day of school, it quickly becomes clear that she wants to say lots of things but chooses not to: she doesn’t catch her new classmate Sam’s attention on the bus and she doesn’t ask the questions she’d like to when her counselor, Mrs. Parker, tells her about the Woman to Woman mentorship program. Because of her own silence, Jade ends her first day annoyed, beaten down, and alone. This, however, stands in sharp contrast to the way Jade thinks of Spanish: she opens her story by telling the reader, “I am learning to speak. To give myself a way out. A way in.” Jade is speaking specifically about Spanish, which she positions as a skill that will allow her to escape her hometown of Portland and go somewhere better. This includes going to Costa Rica on the service learning trip, but it also includes college and beyond—bilingual people, Jade explains, have more “ways in” than people who only speak one language. The differences in the way Jade thinks about Spanish and English suggests that she’s thinking about language in a very particular way—it may give her power in the future but it doesn’t necessarily give her the power or agency she craves in the present.
However, as the novel progresses, Jade gradually expands the ways in which she’s “learning to speak.” In addition to being a talented academic, Jade is also an avid collage artist. Collage gives Jade a way to take ordinary things—gum wrappers, bus schedules, newspapers, photographs of her friends—and turn them into works of art that illustrate her experience of being black as well as her friends’ emotional pain. As Jade becomes fascinated by York, the black slave who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition throughout the Western U.S., collage also becomes a way of pursuing her interest about his journey and relate to York as a fellow person of color. At first, collage is a private thing for Jade, not least because her mom makes it very clear that Jade is a good student first and an artist second. When the Woman to Woman organization asks Jade if she’d be willing to create a piece to donate to the organization’s gala and silent auction, Jade suddenly discovers that collage is more than just a healthy way to connect with herself and voice her pain in a diaristic manner—other people are also interested in hearing what she has to say. Collage, then, becomes a jumping-off point as Jade begins to find her voice and use it confidently. As she learns to more effectively communicate through her art as well as speak about it to buyers (many of whom are very impressed and offer to help Jade network in the future), Jade makes an important discovery: when she expresses herself, even just visually, people will listen.
Jade’s artwork helps her develop the confidence she needs to raise her voice in other settings, like when her white friend Sam behaves in unwittingly racist ways. Jade is also able to talk to her mentor, Maxine, about Woman to Woman’s questionable programming, as well as confront Mr. Flores, Jade’s Spanish teacher who didn’t nominate her for the Costa Rica trip. In all three cases, Jade discovers that raising her voice isn’t actually as difficult or as scary as she thought it would be. Sam is more than willing to apologize and do better, and Maxine is genuinely interested in hearing what Jade has to say and what she wants out of her mentorship experience. And because Jade has the courage to speak up about what she wants to learn, everyone in the program gets the opportunity to attend workshops that are genuinely useful and interesting, such as ones about money management. Most cathartically for Jade, her conversation with Mr. Flores, in which she expresses her hurt and confusion at his choice to not nominate her, culminates weeks later in his proactively nominating Jade for the service learning trip next year. As questions regarding being passed over are ones that Jade has avoided asking for months by this point, Jade learns that it doesn’t hurt to ask—others will never know how badly she wants something if she doesn’t speak up. Through this, the novel makes the point that people cannot go through life hoping that others will know what they want and need intuitively. Rather, people have a much better chance of getting what they need when they speak up and speak out, no matter the language or the medium.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Power of Language ThemeTracker
The Power of Language Quotes in Piecing Me Together
I am learning to speak.
To give myself a way out. A way in.
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.
“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.”
“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?”
“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.
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.”
“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.
“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?”
“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.
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.
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?
“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.
