One Crazy Summer

Chapters 1-4

Reading Check

1. Oakland, California to visit their mother (Chapter 1)

2. Big Ma (their grandmother) always told the girls their mother was homeless. (Chapter 4)

Short Answer

1. Their mother abandoned them six years ago. They don’t know her; she doesn’t know them. All they know is Brooklyn and traveling 3000 miles away from home and everything familiar. The stories they’ve been told about their mother have led them to believe that she is not a nice person. (Inferences can be drawn from chapters 1-4.)

2. Delphine remembers her mother as erratic, writing on the walls in a smoke-and-music-filled house. (Chapter 4) 

3. Delphine is both confused and fascinated by her mother. She sees a tall woman dressed in dark glasses, men’s pants, a hat, and a scarf. Cecile walks them really fast through the airport and hustles them into a car. (Chapter 3) 

Chapters 5-11

Reading Check

1. Chinese takeout (Chapter 5)

2. Members of the Black Panther Party came over. They want Cecile to print something on her printing press. (Chapter 7)

Short Answer

1. In addition to abandoning her daughters six years prior, Cecile doesn’t bother to make the girls home-cooked food. Cecile also makes the girls eat on the floor in the living room, barring them from her kitchen even for a glass of water. She calls Fern “Little Girl” instead of by her name. (Answers may vary, and can come from direct evidence and inferences from any of chapters 1-11.)

2. The way Cecile and the Black Panthers dress makes them look secretive. One of the people riding with Cecile and the girls from the airport calls Cecile a name the girls have never heard before. When the Black Panthers visit, they come over at night, Cecile puts the girls out of the room, and they whisper furtively. The Black Panthers have on all black, they pressure Cecile to use her printing supplies, and (out of context) the girls hear Cecile agree as long as they “take [her] kids.” (Chapters 3, 4, and 7)

3. Cecile needs the girls to have something to do during the day, somewhere to eat breakfast for free, and to deliver the print job she did for them. Also, as a plot point, the girls going to the center for the first time serves as an inciting incident. (Chapters 9 and 10)

Chapters 12-16

Reading Check

1. Nzila means “the path” in Yoruba, a West African language. (Chapter 12)

2. Delphine’s name is an adjective that means “like a dolphin.” (Chapter 13)

3. Vonetta colors the doll’s face with a black permanent marker. (Chapter 14)

4. She hasn’t paid for the newspaper, so she feels like she’s technically stealing. (Chapter 15)

5. Cabbage & onions, baked chicken—a home-cooked meal (Chapter 16)

Short Answer

1. Delphine believes that a person’s name is tightly linked to their identity. Ironically, she and Cecile/Nzila are essentially saying the same thing in this regard. She and her sisters wonder how Cecile will ever become famous for her poetry if she changes her name “whenever [she] feels like it.” (Chapters 12 and 13) 

2. Delphine’s father charges her with taking care of her sisters while they are in Oakland. Cecile's absence and her ongoing lack of care for Delphine and her sisters make Delphine feel even more responsible for her sisters. (Inference drawn throughout the novel up to and including chapter 16)

Chapters 17-21

Reading Check

1. He is Japanese, not Chinese as she assumed. (Chapter 17)

2. A secondhand radio (Chapter 18)

3. It reminds Delphine of her father’s being confronted by a police officer during a road trip to Alabama. The officer called her father a racial slur and threateningly told them to keep the car moving. Delphine recalls how afraid she felt and empathizes with Hirohito. 

Short Answer

1. Delphine realizes that children at the community center are not necessarily safe from those who would violently rally against the Black Panther Party. (Chapter 21)

2. Before visiting Oakland, the girls had learned that civic pride means serving the community and the country by taking on an occupation in public service (teaching, nursing, social work) or serving in the military. They learn that citizenship and civic pride are about responsibility: what citizens owe to their country and community. In Oakland, at the community center, they learn that citizens have rights, and when the government doesn’t honor or respect those rights, citizens can and should demand or protect their rights. (Chapter 19)

3. At home, the girls demand a TV from Cecile, use a rallying song, and present a list of reasons why they need one. (Chapter 18) 

4. Bobby Hutton is close to Delphine in age, only a few years older. (Chapter 20)

Chapters 22-25

Reading Check

1. Big Ma says that Vonetta wasn’t held enough by her mother Cecile as a baby. (Chapter 22)

2. A stool (Chapter 23)

3. By bus (Chapter 24)

4. The shop owner stares at the girls as if he expects them to steal something. Delphine decides to leave. (Chapter 25)

Short Answer

1. She feels that the stool is a wordless welcome. The gesture and being in the kitchen with her mother remind Delphine of how she felt when she was little: as long as she was quiet and not needy, she was welcome to be in the same room with Cecile. (Chapter 23)

2. Moments in this section that show Delphine allowing herself to behave as a carefree child include: watching Hirohito on his go-kart, looking at the Golden Gate Bridge up close, and walking around the wharf filled with a sense of wonder. (Chapters 24 and 25)

Chapters 26-33

Reading Check

1. They find police arresting their mother. The police have also trashed Cecile’s kitchen workshop and her printing press. (Chapter 25 and 26)

2. Mrs. Woods, Hirohito’s mother, takes them in. (Chapter 27)

3. Fern’s poem reveals that Crazy Kelvin is a police informant. (Chapter 30)

4. Afua (Chapters 32 and 33)

Short Answer

1. She was unable to take care of them and give them a good life. Cecile was unprepared and afraid when she became a mother. She was poor and lonely when she became a wife. She is fully dedicated to her art. (Chapter 32 is where the strongest evidence exists, but students can draw these conclusions from Cecile’s behavior throughout the novel.)

2. Cecile defends them from another picture-taking European tourist and the girls hug their mother goodbye. She hugs them back. (Chapter 33)