Family
Clare's personal journey begins with an extended visit to her grandmother during the holiday season. She is a young girl just beginning to take charge of how she views the world. Clare is caught between two worlds due to her mixed heritage -- her Jamaican mom and her wealthy white father. Through discussions with her family members, especially her grandma, she starts to come to her own conclusions about her position in her family and even in the grand scheme of history.
Heritage
Clare's grandmother takes a lot of time to tell her the stories of her own childhood, growing up in colonial Jamaica. Clare has never heard before the tales of her ancestors and their struggle with slavery, oppression, and poverty. Due to her grandma's instruction, Clare starts questioning the historical perspective which she's learned in school. Her dad has always told her that colonialism was a beneficial institution for the natives, but she doesn't believe that after her grandma's stories. She talks to her own mother and realizes that her mom's longtime silence on the issue of race is because she didn't want to instill any shame or fear in her young daughter. Kitty, her mom, wants her daughter to grow up as free-spirited as possible before learning about the social dynamics which she'll eventually have to face head-on.
Victimization
Clare becomes fascinated by the stories of people groups throughout history who have been oppressed. She has a real soft spot for the victims. In school and in her parents' home she is told that those peoples - Jews, colonists, Japanese, gays, etc. - brought their fates upon themselves because they stubbornly clung to unconventional ideas about identity. They seem to believe those people could've chosen to be something else. Clare, however, rejects this idea. She doesn't blame the victims for what happened to them, and she becomes determined to empower oppressed peoples.
Coming of Age/Identity
Clare is a twelve-year-old girl. She's just entering into puberty and beginning to ask all sorts of questions. In the midst of conflicting messages and social pressures, she desperately wants to figure out who she is. As a mixed child, Clare feels torn between to worlds, neither of which fully accepts her. She is loved, however, in every sphere of her life, especially by her family. Additionally, she's learning from her grandmother and her best friend Zoe that the world isn't necessarily the safe, happy place that she had believed up to this point. By the end of the novel, she's developed this understanding of her position in her family and even within the meta-narrative of history. This self-discovery is coupled with her first period. It symbolizes that Clare is now entering a new life stage, one full of direction and learning.
Personal Identity
Clare Savage, the main character, struggles with her mixed-race background and her position in a society that is sharply segregated along racial and class lines. The narrative revolves around her quest for self-discovery as she negotiates her identity in the context of colonialism and post-colonization.
