Multiculturalism
In Scarborough, the residents majorly consist of "visible minorities," the Canadian statistical term for non-whites. Many people in this environment face discrimination, and it is easy to misrepresent a group of people based on false assumptions. Victor, an aspiring artist, receives a grant to paint a mural, only for the police to harass him based on his race. Laura, who is white, has both parents, but she is often neglected by them. Bing is a Filipino minority. He already feels the burden that comes with his race and feeling "different" than others, yet he’s overburdened by more complex issues like his sexuality and his father’s mental health. Sylvie sees the discrimination that her Native mother experiences. Most of the characters evince racist sentiments, but they also benefit from the multicultural environment and do their best to live with, work with, and support each other.
Poverty
The novel is set in Scarborough, a low-income neighborhood. Like many inner cities around the world, it features poor living conditions, unemployment, drugs, and crime. The characters explore their daily life in this chaotic environment. In the novel, Sylvie is struggling to find a home since they cannot afford one, and her mother is seeking help for her autistic son Johnny. Edna works long hours to support her son, while Cory does the same for his daughter. Hina works as a literacy center facilitator and sees the long-standing effects of poverty on young education. Hernandez depicts urban, contemporary poverty with unflinching realness: it is at times brutal and always unfair, but there are moments of beauty, grace, and community as well.
Parenting
There is a stereotype in wider society that low-income parents are not good parents, which is an assertion rooted in classist (and probably racist) perspectives. Certainly, low-income parents may not be able to provide for their children as they would like, or get access to the resources they would like, or be as physically present in their children's lives as they would like. Some characters in the novel are admittedly not great parents—Cory, Bing's father, Sylvie's father, Cindy—but Hernandez both depicts those people with compassion and gives us examples of parents whose love for their children and concomitant sacrifices, care, and acceptance are immensely laudable and inspiring—Marie and Edna. Parenting is an immensely difficult and consuming (and sometimes thankless!) task, but Marie and Edna do not let their bad spouses, lack of money, long work hours, or fatigue get in their way of showing fierce and unwavering love for their children.
Resilience
Both children and adults in this novel face innumerable obstacles, whether those are obstacles within or outside their families, part of their social class or racial or gender or sexual identities, legacies of trauma, etc. Not all of them are able to deal with these obstacles in healthy or sustainable ways, but Hernandez presents some characters who ably take on the difficult things in their lives and work towards ameliorating them. Marie, for example, has a son with autism with whom she has never fully been able to communicate, and she desires to connect with this difficult but loved son. She is no saint, and she experiences very human frustration and despair, but she never gives up on him and is eventually able to achieve that communication that she so desired.
Growing Up
With several of the protagonists being children, it is no surprise that one of the themes of the novel is growing up. This most conspicuously plays out in the stories of Bing and Sylvie. These children experience the vicissitudes of youth—bullying, school, demanding siblings, desire for acceptance, the imminent moving away of a friend, and lack of surety as to who one is and wants to be—and those that other children might not have to face—absent or disappointing fathers, burgeoning awareness of one's queerness, and poverty. Both of them demonstrate tenacity, compassion, and self-awareness as they navigate these challenges, and though Hernandez does not give them perfect, fairy-tale endings, she does suggest that their strength and courage have rendered them able to face a myriad of obstacles and come out more self-assured.
Immigration
Scarborough experienced a huge amount of immigration in the 20th and 21st centuries, and Hernandez depicts the resulting tensions from such large and abrupt influxes of foreigners. Many immigrants find themselves in low-wage jobs and neighborhoods with limited infrastructure, support programs, and resources. The racial and classist hierarchy with white people at the top means that these "visible minority" groups who have similar conditions are instead suspicious of, hostile to, and perceived as being in direct competition with each other.
Trauma
Hernandez compassionately depicts the lasting and heavy weight of trauma upon young people. Whether it is physical trauma, such as Laura and Bing's abuse at the hands of their fathers; neglect, as with Laura and both her parents but especially her mother; or emotional trauma, as Bing experiences when he is bullied by his father and his peers, these children carry with them scars that continue to manifest themselves as feelings of low self-worth, physical reactions like Laura "turning herself off," and pervasive conjuring of the negative memories. Through people like the doggedly supportive and nurturing Ms. Hina and welcoming, safe places like the literacy center, though, such trauma can begin to be healed, even if only a minuscule amount.
