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Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson (view source)
Revision as of 11:32, 16 December 2017
, 11:32, 16 December 2017no edit summary
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Jade lives in a rough area of Portland, Oregon. But she goes to a very posh school on scholarship.And, as a an African American scholarship girl, Jade knows she must grab every opportunity the school offers. Her mother, a care worker, won't be paying for college after all - there is rarely enough money at home for ice cream, let alone college. But why do all the opportunities the school offers Jade seem so, well, ''patronising''? Jade doesn't feel like a charity case. She doesn't feel broken. Her mum is a good mum. It's infuriating. But, when the school offers Jade a mentoring programme that will ensure a college scholarship, how can she say no?
We follow Jade over the course of a school year, in which she makes a new friend in Sam, develops a sometimes uneasy relationship with her mentor Maxine and tests boundaries with her mother. All through this, Jade continues to work at her art - making collages of everyday ephemera into beautiful images. As she does this, she reflects on the interactions of race, gender and class, and how they affect not just her but figures from America's past and present - Yorke, the slave who accompanied explorers Lewis and Clark; vicious police violence against a local girl.