Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Smiled Beads, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Faith
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation
Displacement and Identity
Women, War, and Survival
Charity vs. Sharing
Summary
Analysis
One Sunday back in Chicago, Clemantine does Mariette’s hair while her mother cooks. Mariette accuses Clemantine of hurting her. Clemantine thinks that Mariette doesn’t know what real pain is. Clemantine feels cold and asks Michele to bring her a blanket. Michele looks up from the TV and says she wants to be like Eloise, a spoiled cartoon character. Mariette says that Michele will never be like Eloise because she is stuck here, and Michele cries.
In this scene, two generations and three levels of experience clash. Clemantine feels that she knows real pain more than Mariette, who was a baby when they were refugees in Africa. In contrast to Clemantine and Mariette, Michele is spoiled. Mariette then accuses Michele of not knowing how hard life is. In turn, it becomes clear that Clemantine’s many experiences of hardship and pain have made her somewhat resentful of people who are capable of going through life in a state of ignorant bliss.
Themes
Clemantine finds it hard to navigate the line between the African and African American communities. Clemantine is African and lives in the United States, but she doesn’t have any history with white Americans. On the other hand, Mariette, Freddy, and Michele live in public housing and pick up African American slang. Even Claire moves back and forth between African American and traditional African trends. She sympathizes with African Americans whose families have been dehumanized by white Americans for generations. But Clemantine lives with the Thomases, and she feels like her identity is fragmented.
Not only was Clemantine’s personal identity shattered by her experiences, but her cultural identity was as well. When she immigrates to the United States, she arrives in a country in which Black people have a long history of pain and oppression. Although she also has a history of pain and oppression, it is different from this American one. She feels that she has no history in the United States, a fact that makes her feel less at home.
Themes
Clemantine feels privileged now. She no longer worries about basic needs and has time to think and create. She signs up for modeling classes that teach girls how to use makeup, walk a runway, and prepare for a photoshoot. She wants to command a space and get paid to be looked at. In the class, Clemantine is told to measure herself every month so as not to lie on her resume about her size. At the end of the class, she dresses up and goes to a photoshoot. She feels glamorous until see realizes her photos will cost $100 each. She leaves feeling cheated.
Now that Clemantine doesn’t have to worry about her basic needs, she focuses on her appearance and on loving her body. When she was a refugee, her body was only a burden that caused her to constantly suffer because it was in need. She was never comfortable enough to focus on her beauty. In the States, though, she finds it possible to pay attention to such matters.
Themes
When it is time, Clemantine applies to Princeton, Yale, and Georgetown. Her high school advisor thinks she’s reaching too high and convinces her to apply to several less competitive schools as well as the others. Clemantine is desperate to leave Chicago and her family. Even around Claire, she feels ignored. She wants to run away and hide from the pain of her past. So far, nowhere feels like home. That fall, she marches in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. She can’t find dark enough nude tights, so she has to dye them herself.
Clemantine wants to go far away to college—not out of confidence and ambition but out of the desire to escape. Even though she is no longer a refugee and is safe in the United States, she still feels like a refugee in the sense that she never feels at home. She has this feeling with the Thomases and even with her reunited family, suggesting that she’ll struggle to feel at home wherever she goes.
Themes
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That spring, Clemantine is waitlisted at Yale. She flies out to New Haven and attends several interviews with Yale, telling her story. She tells the dean of admissions that she belongs at Yale; she knows what needs to be fixed to make the world a better place. A week later, the dean calls and tells her that she’s been accepted, but that they want her to take preliminary classes at Hotchkiss—a preparatory school in Connecticut—to improve her English. At first, Clemantine feels set back, but she reminds herself that deferring and taking extra classes is a privileged hardship.
Although Clemantine feels lost inside, she has an impressive outward confidence. She struggles with her internal feeling that she belongs nowhere, but she flies out to Yale and asserts to the dean of admissions that she belongs there. She learned this skill as a refugee: to pretend to be other than how she feels in order to get what she wants. Even in the United States, this skill gets her far in life.
Themes
