54 pages • 1 hour read
A Mango-Shaped Space
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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Mia and her mother return to Jerry’s lab at the university the next day. Mia is ignoring Jenna’s calls; she feels like Jenna does not deserve to know what Mia has learned just yet, especially after she betrayed her trust. Jerry tells Mia more about synesthesia, and she learns that every synesthete has different color associations. Mia’s mother asks if Jerry can help her to work around her synesthesia so that she does not fail math or Spanish. Jerry suggests a tutor to help her with these subjects. He also mentions that traumatic events can dull a person’s synesthesia. Mia reflects that her grandfather’s death did not change her synesthesia and concludes that it must not have been that traumatic for her, especially since she still “[has] a part of Grandpa in Mango” (104). When Mia returns home, Beth asks her to tell her about her synesthesia. Mia agrees to tell her while she looks for Mango, who has disappeared. After hearing about synesthesia, Beth says that she thinks it is interesting, which surprises Mia. The sisters find Mango, who is hiding in a pile of hats and gloves.
Mia sits impatiently through dinner. After dinner, she is allowed to use the family computer to browse the synesthesia forum. She asks her mother for permission to make a profile on the website. Her mother agrees and tells her that there is a boy named Roger on the phone for her. Mia realizes that she has been avoiding Roger and their history project. She asks her mom to tell him that she will call him back, but she refuses and makes Mia talk to him. Mia talks to Roger while she browses the synesthesia website. She only half hears what Roger is saying but agrees to meet at lunch in the cafeteria to talk about their project. Mia gets lost in different articles about different kinds of synesthesia and forgets when she hung up the phone.
Chapter 8 Summary
On Sunday, Mia receives an email from someone on the synesthesia forum. His name is Adam, and he is only a year older than Mia. He tells her that he lives in Boston and has “colored hearing and colored numbers and letters (like you)” (115). Mia is excited to have someone her age to talk to about synesthesia and eagerly replies to his email. She ignores emails from Jenna and her other friend, Kimberly. Later, Mia tries to do some homework but finds that she is distracted. She goes for a walk and reflects that she does not know if Adam is telling the truth. She returns home and sends him another email, asking him to prove his identity. She reads Kimberly’s email, which talks about her crush on a boy at school.
The day passes, and Mia receives no reply from Adam. Finally, after dinner, Mia returns to the computer and finds three emails from him. Mia feels jittery and replies, wondering if she has a crush on him. Mia’s mother asks her what Roger wanted on the phone last night. Mia tells her about the history project and her mother remarks that Mia has been very distracted lately. Mia assures her that everything is under control.
The next day, Mia, Jenna, and Zack wait for the school bus. Jenna reminds Mia that they were supposed to get together to make a love potion for Kimberly. Mia apologizes and says that they can meet after school to make up for it. At lunch, Roger finds Mia and tells her that they need to work on their history project. He asks if she forgot that they agreed to meet, and she admits that she did. Jenna tells Mia that she is being irresponsible. Mia, Roger, and the rest of their history group discuss what topic to pick for their assignment. Roger suggests the topic of a ship carrying enslaved people that he and Mia learned about in an art class several years ago. Mia is surprised that Roger remembers the model of the ship that she made. The group agrees to make the ship the topic of their project.
Mia learns that Roger gets acupuncture for his injured ankle. She remembers reading about a woman with synesthesia who said that acupuncture made her see her colors more vividly. She decides she should try to make an appointment. In math class, there is a surprise quiz. Before the quiz, Mia draws all the formulas in a color code on her jeans. The colors stand for all the numbers in the equations that she is supposed to memorize; “Maroon is x, gray is y, and light blue is z. Yellow is a, brown is b, and red is c” (132). This allows her to cheat on the test. When she gets her quiz back, she has achieved an A.
Chapter 9 Summary
The next day, Mia gets another email from Adam. He agrees that getting acupuncture sounds like a cool idea and offers to forge a doctor’s note for her. Mia gets a phone call from Jerry. He tells her about an opportunity coming up over the Thanksgiving weekend. He has received funding to get together a group of people with synesthesia to discuss their condition. He wants Mia to come. Mia is excited, and Jerry and her mother make plans. Mia wants to invite Billy as well, but she cannot find his family’s phone number in the phonebook.
On the bus to school, Mia sits next to Jenna and thinks about the tension in their friendship. Jenna only thinks about the birthday party that she is planning these days, and Mia wonders if she even notices that everything is different between them. After school, Mia meets her math tutor, Samantha, who is very enthusiastic about math. Zack clearly has a crush on Samantha. When her tutoring is done, Mia’s dad brings home pizza for dinner. She takes a few slices and goes upstairs to take a bath. Her dad is disappointed that she does not want to eat dinner with them, but he chooses not to push it.
Mia takes a hot bath using a candle that she steals from Beth and listening to music from the radio. She read on the synesthesia forum that the steam from the bath combined with music and candlelight could make her colors more vivid and dimensional. As she watches, she sees the music reflected in the steam: “The violins are hundreds of shimmering gold lights, the horns are cubes of green, and the drums are a bright aqua blue” (142). She feels like she could reach out and touch the colors.
On Sunday, Mia calls Roger and asks him if he can get his mom to set up an acupuncture appointment for her. She does not want to ask her own parents for the appointment. Roger agrees, but he can tell that Mia is not telling him something. Mia goes over to Jenna’s house. On her way, she overhears her parents talking about her. Her father expresses concern about her, but her mother says that Mia is just “in a phase” and “trying to figure out who she is” (145). Her father argues that her grades are not improving, but her mother says that she got an A on her last math quiz. Her father did not know this, and Mia realizes that she must have forgotten to tell him. Her mother remarks that it is strange that she got the A before she started seeing her tutor. As Mia sneaks away, some threads from her friendship bracelet rip when they get caught on the door. She tries to hide the broken threads and reflects that she and Jenna might be too old to be wearing them.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
In these chapters of the book, Mia’s world starts to open up. In her journey toward Understanding Oneself, she spends a lot of time on the synesthesia forum. Although Mia’s parents are now fully aware of her synesthesia, Mia keeps much of her exploration from them, meaning that the reader has a privileged perspective. She does not tell them why she is having nightly baths to watch the colors, and she tries to make an acupuncture appointment without involving her parents at all. Mia is beginning to think that people without synesthesia cannot truly understand her.
That underlying belief informs her changing relationships with other characters in these chapters. Mia draws away from her parents, who worry about her grades and her strange behavior. Although she is aware that her relationship with Jenna is still on the rocks, she does not make consistent efforts to communicate with her or resolve the issue. Often, Mia assumes the worst of other people, like when she tells Beth about her synesthesia. She is surprised when Beth responds with genuine interest rather than derision—synesthesia itself is a plot device that Mass uses to highlight the differences between a multitude of characters in relation to the same topic. Mia also ignores her other friends, including Kimberly. She feels too caught up in everything she is learning to think about her friend’s crush on a boy at school. By ignoring her friends’ emails, she lets her relationships flounder. As before, she has not yet found a balance between her knowledge of herself and her external connections, meaning that these chapters continue the rising action toward Mia’s coming-of-age.
Mia does not demonstrate Being Considerate of Others in her ongoing project with Roger; in fact, she is very dismissive of his continued requests for her participation in their project. When she forgets her agreement to meet with Roger at lunch, Jenna tells her that she is being irresponsible, further indicating the current distance between the two best friends. Ultimately, Mia does provide some meaningful help with the project when she explains what she remembers of the story of the ship carrying enslaved people.
Roger has qualities to which Mia aspires in her coming-of-age. Where Mia neglects her school work and tends to be self-centered, Roger remains both diligent in his work and sympathetic toward others. Their juxtaposition hence primarily relates to the theme of Being Considerate of Others: He continues to treat Mia with consideration even when she fails to complete her responsibilities and makes his job more difficult. He also agrees to help Mia to set up an acupuncture appointment even though he can see that she is hiding something, demonstrating that he has the ability to set aside his own needs to help others.
Mass’s introduction of Adam in these chapters highlight Mia’s coming-of-age story with a romantic subplot that is both formative and juvenile. Mia begins her email correspondence with Adam in these chapters. She is excited to connect with a fellow synesthete, and Adam initially seems fun and charming. He encourages her to get acupuncture, even if it means going behind her parents’ backs. At this point in her journey, Mia finds it easier to form superficial relationships with people with whom she assumes she has something in common instead of maintaining and repairing her existing relationships. This forum is a plot device that allows Mass to connect Mia to external characters beyond her own small sphere; it represents some of the exciting aspects of growing up. Mia wants to keep what she is learning to herself, especially when she realizes that she might have a crush on Adam.
The incident with the math test also develops the theme of Understanding Oneself. While Mia’s synesthesia has historically been a problem when it comes to learning math, she finally finds a way to turn it to her advantage by cheating. This is a pivotal moment in Mia’s character development because she feels guilty and chooses not to confess to her parents, but she also realizes that something that she once thought of as a disadvantage is not always detrimental. This gives her a more well-rounded understanding of synesthesia. At this point, the narrative remains ambiguous as to whether Samantha’s tutoring actually helps Mia to improve her math skills, or whether she is just getting good grades by cheating. Mia’s actions do weigh on her conscience, but she cannot resist the benefits that cheating provides for her in her most difficult school subjects.
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