Previous
Marcus
Bhagita is Maxine’s classmate. An Indian Sikh girl, Bhagita also deals with racist harassment at school, but she does not let the bullying visibly faze her, a trait that Maxine envies. Maxine also envies Bhagita’s sleek, straight hair. When Maxine gets microbraids, Bhagita compliments them but says that she preferred Maxine’s natural hair, which causes Maxine to lash out, calling Bhagita’s hair dirty and threatening to cut it off.
Bhagita Quotes in The Hate Race
The The Hate Race quotes below are all either spoken by Bhagita or refer to Bhagita. 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:
).
Chapter 19 Quotes
That afternoon, I couldn’t concentrate on studying, I sat at the desk in my room. I could hear the scissors snapping in my hands, the ugly, abusive words I’d said to Bhagita. They played over, and over, and over in my head. I felt sick about what I’d done. I wondered what Bhagita was doing; if she’d gone home and told her parents about me hassling her. I hated myself. I wanted to tear the hair extensions out of my head.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Hate Race LitChart as a printable PDF.
Bhagita Character Timeline in The Hate Race
The timeline below shows where the character Bhagita appears in The Hate Race. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 19
Maxine recounts her experience with Bhagita, a Sikh Indian girl who also faces harassment at school due to her race and...
(full context)
The braids turn out well, and Maxine receives admiration at school. Bhagita compliments her hair, but says she liked it better before and mentions how poor women...
(full context)
Chapter 20
Eventually, Bhagita relaxes around Maxine again, but Maxine never fully forgives herself for what she did. She...
(full context)
