39 pages • 1 hour read
Another Brooklyn
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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
August thinks back to the beginning of her adolescence, when men began to notice and call to them on the streets. At a younger age, they had already begun sharing stories of the shoe repairman who paid to see girls’ panties. When Gigi revealed that her choir teacher presses his erection against her, her friends encouraged her to continue pursuing her dreams—but to be careful, too. As the girls’ bodies changed, they locked arms to protect each other, knowing they would not be safe alone. August’s mother admonition not to trust women became a distant memory.
As she grew closer to her friends, August stayed close to her brother. She states that the two continued to watch Brooklyn through their window. Thinking of her apartment, she remembers a conversation with her father. She asked him what was in a particular jar—“whose ashes?” Her father, frustrated, tells her that she already knows.
Chapter 8 Summary
During the summer of the New York blackout, August and her brother want to participate in the looting and revelry, but their father instructs them to stay behind the front gate. They watched their white neighbors flee their apartments, renting to anyone who would take over the lease. She remembers that, during this period, her brother had “discovered math,” and with his newfound understanding of the absolute, concluded that their mother was gone forever. Meanwhile, her father began to bring women home. August thought that each of these women “brought her [mother] closer” (86).
The family’s routine changed when Sister Loretta arrived, announcing: “Your father is ready to change his life” (89). She forbids the ingestion of ham and boiled potatoes, “slave food” (91). She teaches August to clean, and the family begins to pray together: “Just as Sister Loretta promised, Allah healed us” (93). August became attached to Sister Loretta and began to follow her ways—although always with the knowledge that she was, in some sense, lying. Just as her father found faith, she found her first boyfriend, Jerome.
Chapter 9 Summary
August writes that, as she grew closer to Loretta, she continued to yearn for her mother and refused to wear a hijab. Alone, she remembered her mother’s warning that women couldn’t be friends and feared that she and her friends were reaching the point when they would inevitably drift apart. She remembers Sylvia’s home: she, Angela, and Gigi were outsiders there. Sylvia and her three sisters had piano and dance lessons, as well as spoke French. Her parents looked at her friends disapprovingly and questioned them endlessly about their family backgrounds, making them feel ashamed. There, Sylvia’s older sister told her: “Don’t try to act like a dusty, dirty black American” (105). In order to feel closer to Sylvia, August told her of her kisses with Jerome. At 13, they went further than kissing for the first time, and August longed for Sylvia’s “promised future” (106) rather than her own.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
These chapters trace August and her friends’ early entrance into adolescence. Although the girls have been aware of men looking at them—and touching them—since girlhood, as they approach puberty and the age of 12, men’s attention becomes both a concern and a preoccupation. They encourage each other to stay away from harassers—to care for themselves and to hold on to childhood.
August’s entry into adolescence coincides with two changes at home: her father joining the Nation of Islam, and the increasing difficulty of believing her mother will arrive soon. Sister Loretta champions physical and spiritual cleanliness, and both of these practices help to lessen August and her family’s anguish over her mother. Eating healthy, living in a clean house, and dedicating themselves to their prayers helps them heal. Sister Loretta is a stabilizing presence, able to care for August. However, her presence in the home makes it more evident that August’s mother will not be returning. These pages strongly imply that she has, in fact, already died. August finds her attention on a jar filled with ashes, and her father is frustrated when she says she does not know whose they are. Even her young brother knows that their mother will not be returning.
August thus lives in a space between fantasy and reality, childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience. She fears entering the world of adulthood—and of sexuality—for fear that she will have to abandon all at once her past with her mother; her present with her friends; and her future as a lawyer.
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