Such a Fun Age: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Emira Tucker grew up in a town in Maryland called Sewell Bridge, where 6.5 percent of the population is deaf. Though the Tuckers all had perfect hearing, Sewell Bridge lent itself well to the family’s “proclivity toward craftsmanship.” Mr. Tucker owns a bee steer and keeps beehives year-round. Mrs. Tucker binds books. Alfie Tucker won second place in the 2013 National Latte Art Competition and was invited to apprentice at a roastery in Austin, Texas. Justyne Tucker sews Halloween costumes and flower girl clothing and sells her creations on her Etsy shop.

In an effort to help “her hands to find themselves,” Emira enrolled at Temple University, and she was the first person in her family to attend a four-year college.  One of Emira’s early projects was learning formal sign language, but she found it hard to stop using the conversational slang she spoke in Sewell Bridge. She tried transcription, too, and then made money typing up class notes for deaf students. She eventually earned an English degree. But while she didn’t mind doing anything, she didn’t love doing anything either. She moved back home the summer after Philadelphia, and she missed the city. Her father ordered her to find something and stick with it. Emira enrolled in transcription school but hated it and quit. She didn’t tell her family.

Emira was working part time jobs and struggling to keep herself afloat when Alix Chamberlain hired her. Emira found caring for Briar to be a great way to keep her anxieties about what to do with her hands at bay. So what upset her about the altercation at Market Depot wasn’t so much the guard’s racial bias against her, but the fact that she could have avoided the situation altogether if she’d had a real job. She anguishes about her financial situation and lack of direction all the time. Emira is almost 26, at which point she’ll be removed from her parents’ health insurance policy.

Emira sometimes tells herself that having a 9-to-5 job would make her into a full-fledged adult: she’d start making her bed, and she’d start liking coffee. But she’d also stop staying up late into the night discovering new music. She tells herself she can find another family to work for; they’d hire her as a full-time nanny and take her on vacations and consider her part of the family. But Emira can’t imagine caring for a child other than Briar. Briar is special: she makes interesting observations and is “constantly struggling with demons of propriety.”