Summary
When she is in grade six, her last year of primary school, Clarke goes to the library to read about Jamaica for a project. The librarian helps her find a brand-new book that speaks of the country’s sweet crops and beautiful landscape and laid-back people. Clarke is unnerved to discover that Jamaica is a former British slave colony, and that, by implication, her father’s family is descended from West African slaves. The lyrical and poetic way her grandparents speak results from the native languages of slaves mixing with English to develop “various creoles or patois.” She understands now why people always say she looks African, which never made sense because her parents’ families are from the West Indies.
Clarke makes her poster-board project, neglecting to mention slavery or the violent history of colonization. She receives 99.99%, as the teacher never gives out 100%. The grade puts her just above Lewis, her friend and competitor for valedictorian. At the end of the year, Clarke receives the “Dux of the School” award for having the highest overall marks in grade six. Her prize is The Family Book of Mary Claire, a children’s novel about a white Australian settler family that contains anger-inducing depictions of Aboriginal Australians. She throws the book across her bedroom.
The summer before she begins high school, Clarke runs into Carlita at the petrol station, where Clarke is buying a slurpee. Carlita is with a new friend who is going to the same boarding school as her; Clarke is surprised to see this friend is brown-skinned. Carlita speaks to Clarke politely, and claims to be her friend in front of the new friend. Clarke later mocks Carlita’s words to her new friend, Selina.
Clarke attends the same school as her sister, and on the first day overhears students talking about how you can’t tell them apart, “like with monkeys.” At lunch, a group of grade eleven girls are made to lead the grade sevens on a tour of the school. The girls casually refer to the library as Chinatown because only “chinks” and “spastics” hang out there. Clarke looks at the library longingly, thinking it is her kind of place.
In gym class, the teacher is disappointed in Clarke’s running performance, which he assumed would have been on par with that of her older sister, Cecelia. Clarke says she isn’t much of a runner. Mr. Spencer insists she join the running group to get trained up, saying, “It’s in the blood. You folks are built for it!” A student informs Clarke that Cecelia’s nickname, behind her back, is Black Flash because she runs so fast.
Clarke thinks of the Black athletes she has seen on TV and wonders whether it really is in her blood to be a fast runner. Clarke then joins the morning running group, annoying her sister. Clarke tries her best, steadily improving but not coming close to what she or Mr. Spencer imagined might be possible. He is genuinely perplexed. But Clarke continues going to the running group, reveling “in the almost unbearable pain” of overtaxing her body and lungs.
Clarke’s grade eight history teacher, Miss Cooke, shows the class Prime Minister Paul Keating’s press conference in which he acknowledges the dispossession of Indigenous Australians’ traditional lands and the colonial violence of the country’s founding. A student named Greg Adams says, “Nobody gives a shit about the abos. Except maybe blackie over there,” gesturing to Clarke. The teacher sends him out of the classroom in a rage.
Clarke comments that Greg Adams also harasses their Asian math teacher, Mr. Chandra, pretending he doesn’t understand the man’s accent, calling him a “curry muncher.” Greg spits at Clarke when he passes her, and calls her an animal and monkey while openly advocating racial segregation. Greg’s friend Lachlan Jones joins the bullying, refusing to let Clarke pass unless she calls herself a blackie or says she has AIDS. While asleep, Clarke claws at her skin, scratching herself.
At fourteen, Clarke’s friend Selina has to take increasingly long breaks from school to deal with her asthma, leaving Clarke alone to navigate social life. The ubiquitous sight of awkward girls becoming adolescent beauties makes Clarke want to straighten her frizzy hair. The hair relaxer is supposed to give her “Chinese straight” hair; instead it burns a fifty-cent coin–sized patch into the back of her scalp.
Clarke goes to a pool party the next day. The hairdresser said she can’t wet her hair for two weeks, so she stays out of the water. But the host’s mother’s questions about why she isn’t going in prompts Clarke to get in the water anyway. The other kids get out, saying they don’t want to be in the water anymore. This marks the end of Clarke’s attempt at belonging. Without Selina, she will make do with being alone.
Analysis
The theme of storytelling arises with Clarke’s anecdote about her grade six Jamaica project. While researching in the library, Clarke learns for the first time that she is descended from people who were violently removed from their West African homelands to toil as slaves on Jamaican sugar cane plantations. Clarke is confused to learn this information, as her family has never discussed it with her. Clarke also learns that there is an irony embedded in her grandparents’ musical way of speaking, never having known that their beautiful patois results from their ancestors’ native languages mixing with English.
Rather than include Jamaica’s colonial history in her project, Clarke tells a different, easier story, focusing only on the nation’s stereotyped reputation as a gorgeous country full of happy people. In an instance of situational irony, Clarke’s teacher gives her a near-perfect grade, rewarding Clarke’s sanitized portrayal of Jamaica. This grade pushes Clarke’s average above that of her main competition, Lewis, and she leaves primary school having won Dux of the School. However, in yet another instance of situational irony, she finds that the book she is given as a prize is so simplistic in its portrayal of Indigenous Australians that she cannot bear to read it.
Clarke builds on the theme of overt racism with her recounting of the first days of high school. When Clarke and her best friend Selina are given a tour of the school grounds, the older girls casually use slurs like “chink” to refer to Asian Australian students. They also invoke tropes, claiming that Asian prefer studying over socializing, and therefore should be avoided. In an instance of situational irony, Clarke looks longingly at the library she has been told to avoid, commenting that this refuge for socially isolated students is appealing to her.
Everyday racism also arises when Clarke meets Mr. Spencer, the gym teacher who believes Black people are biologically well-suited to running. It doesn’t help Clarke that her older sister Cecelia has earned a reputation as a fast runner, which only contributes to Spencer’s belief that running talent is in Clarke’s blood. While Clarke and Spencer soon realize that his expectations for her will not be met, in yet another instance of situational irony, Clarke finds that the immense pain of extreme cardiovascular exertion is satisfying because it offers her a brief respite from worrying about being singled out as different.
The themes of Indigenous rights and institutional racial discrimination return with Clarke’s anecdote about Prime Minister Keating’s formal acknowledgment of the colonial violence bound up in the nation’s founding and the ongoing injustices to which Indigenous people are subjected. That Miss Cooke shares the video with the class to spark a meaningful conversation about Indigenous rights and the government’s responsibility to address the legacy of colonialism is a testament to changing attitudes within Australia.
However, Cooke’s effort is immediately undermined by Greg Adams, who overtly parrots white-supremacist talking points and tosses out anti-Asian and anti-Black slurs. With her commentary on him and Lachlan Jones, Clarke shows how bullying becomes crueler when she is a teenager. Building on the theme of how trauma manifests, Clarke notes how this intensifying bullying triggers unconscious scratching and clawing while she sleeps.
