64 pages • 2 hours read
Mockingbird Summer
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Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: This section discusses racism, racial violence, and rape.
In 1964, Kate “Corky” Corcoran is 13 years old and lives in segregated High Cotton, a small town in Texas. The story begins following a series of important events in American History such as the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The following years bring more changes and upheaval with the passing of civil rights legislation, protests against American military involvement in Vietnam, the rise of 1960s counterculture, and the Women’s Liberation Movement.
The narrator announces that the summer of 1964 is the last of Corky’s childhood. Sit-in protests, a softball game, and her friendship with America, a young Black girl in High Cotton, bring “a small miracle” in her town and change Corky forever (xi). The town librarian’s recommendation of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird catalyzes Corky’s coming-of-age arc.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Summer 1964”
Corky enters the town’s library along with her dog, Roy Rogers, who follows her everywhere. Corky, a tomboy who loves the library and reads every book she can, makes friends with the librarian who gives her Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to read during the summer despite the fact that it’s considered an adult book. Corky leaves, excited to start reading. As she walks home, she runs into Dwayne, the bully of her school.
Corky spends her time working at her father’s drugstore, going to school, church and the library. High Cotton is segregated according to Jim Crow laws—the white residents primarily live on the Northside while Black residents live on the Southside. The railroad tracks provide a line of demarcation between the two parts of the town. Corky’s family’s business, Corcoran’s Drugstore, is the only pharmacy in town. Despite racial segregation, Corky believes that everyone in High Cotton gets along. After a lengthy season of economic decline, many of High Cotton’s businesses have failed, leaving only the drugstore. High Cotton was founded by Noah Ulysses Boatwright, who created a cotton business in 1872 and employed recently emancipated Black people. Now, in the 1960s, most of working-class Black and white citizens work for the railroad. The community is passionate about baseball, and the Baptist and Methodist churches have organized rival girls’ softball teams.
At the drugstore, Peter J. Hockenheimer, the Baptist pastor, tells Corky that, due to the boys’ baseball team’s recent loss, the Baptist girls’ softball team is their only chance of scoring a victory against the Methodists, but expectations are low.
Chapter 2 Summary
At home, Corky’s father calls, announcing the arrival of Evangeline Willcox, who will work as a caretaker at the Corcoran’s home to repay Cal’s loan to her husband, who lost his railroad job.
Corky continues reading To Kill a Mockingbird and asks her mother, Belle, what rape is. Worried by the question, Belle calls the librarian to protest. The librarian tells her that the novel is about racial injustice and Corky should read it. Corky asks more questions about rape and racism, but Belle avoids them.
Evangeline arrives at the Corcoran’s home with her daughter, America. Corky sees the two “slim Black women” and looks at them with curiosity (16). Belle welcomes them and as Corky observes them, she realizes that she has never been to the Southside of High Cotton. Evangeline is Haitian and speaks little English. Corky introduces herself to America just as Corky’s brother, Mack, returns home from his first year at the university.
Corky asks America to join practice with her for the softball game. America admires the Corcoran’s collection of books and Corky tells America she likes her hair. She learns that America does not have many books of her own and that her school is small. Students in the Southside use old textbooks from Corky’s school, and Corky is surprised to learn that America is the only girl. They go outside to play baseball with Mack.
America is amazingly fast, catches the ball every time, and she beats Mack in a foot race. Mack’s astonished by her talent and calls his coach, asking him to meet them at the track. They all admire America’s skills, and the coach says she runs like Wilma Rudolph, the “fastest woman in the world” (29).
Pastor Pete follows them home and asks America to join the Baptist softball team. Evangeline hesitates, but the pastor calls the Black Baptist Reverend, who agrees.
Meanwhile, Cal and Mack argue over Mack’s baseball dreams and his low grades. Cal tells him he will stock for him at the drugstore during the summer so he can get caught up. Later, Corky goes to Mack’s room and asks him what rape is. She shows him the novel, and Mack keeps it for the night.
Chapter 3 Summary
The next morning, Corky overhears a fight between her parents. Belle wants to work and tells Cal that the Civil Rights Act will concern women, too. Cal disagrees and tells her to stay at home.
Corky finds Mack practicing baseball drills outside. He tells Corky that America should play with the girls’ team because “[e]verybody’s got a right to try filling their God-given potential” (37). As a college student in the 1960s, Mack follows and engages with the social unrest of the time, witnessing the efforts of Black protesters and activists fighting for civil rights. He knows that Black student athletes cannot get scholarships and believes things should be better. Corky does not understand. She finds Belle in the kitchen making breakfast. Recalling her father’s words, Corky begins to recognize that her mother is always at home. Evangeline and America arrive. Belle says she does not need America today and that Mack should take her home.
Mack drives Corky and America downtown. Corky worries that Mack will stop by to visit their “cranky” grandfather, Papa Cal, first, and she does not want America to meet him. Papa Cal supports Jim Crow laws but has a Black man named Willy as a companion who worked as a sharecropper with him. Papa Cal is now almost blind, and Corky sees him once a week. Mack says America needs shoes to train for softball and they stop at Daniel’s shoe store. Daniel feels obliged to maintain racial segregation in his store, but he’s heard about America’s skills and gifts the shoes to her.
America asks Mack to keep the shoes and give them to her at the track. She says she’ll come alone to the field and heads to the Southside on foot.
America feels “something new happening” as she returns home, and she smiles despite thinking she should be skeptical (47).
Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis
The prologue establishes Lynda Rutledge’s third-person narrative by an omniscient narrator, providing insight into both the pasts and futures of the characters. The narrator primarily focuses on the protagonist’s point of view but shifts away from Corky for select chapters to explore the perspectives of other characters. Rutledge begins her narrative in 1964 and ends in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. The author connects pivotal moments of social justice activism from the 1960s to those of the 2020s, drawing distinctions and similarities between the two time periods. This connection between past and present mirrors the protagonist’s journey from childhood innocence and naivete to greater adult experience and perspective. The prologue introduces Rutledge’s protagonist, Kate “Corky” Corcoran, and establishes the rural, small town Texas setting to contextualize the narrative. As Rutledge notes, “the setting [tells] a tale all its own” (287), shaping the person Corky is at the start of her transformational character arc.
The character arc Rutledge establishes for Corky underscores the novel’s thematic interest in Coming of Age in a Transformative Era. Corky grows up during a period of social unrest and cultural transformation. Rutledge describes the summer of 1964 as the last year of Corky’s childhood, indicating the start of her journey toward maturity. Corky, is a 13-year-old girl who loves books and her dog, Roy Rogers, who’s always by her side. The dog’s human-like name suggests his importance as a “character” in the story. Rutledge’s description of Corky as a “tomboy,” signals the ways in which Corky is already beginning to deviate from the traditionally prescribed norms for young women in rural Texas. She fails to conform to the standards of femininity that her mother and her society expect. Rutledge describes Belle as a beautiful woman, noting that Corky looks more like her father, “pug-nosed, sandy-haired, and freckled” (13-14).
Corky’s curiosity about people signals her emerging desire to form her own opinions and define her own values for herself rather than having them dictated to her by her family or society. In this section, Rutledge emphasizes the limited understanding of the world prescribed to Corky by the town’s racial divide—white people on the Northside and Black people on the Southside. The symbol of the railroad tracks, “a convenient little dividing line for everyone to live ‘separate but equal’” (7), represents the community’s systemically entrenched racism. However, while Black residents come to the Northside for work or to visit Cal’s drugstore, white people never visit the Southside, and Corky’s ignorance about the Southside and its people dominates in this section. Corky’s constant examination of her surroundings—a community that struggles to address its own racial prejudice—demonstrates her willingness to learn and desire to understand the world, foreshadowing her character arc and her transformative journey.
The novel’s intertextuality demonstrates Rutledge’s use of To Kill a Mockingbird to emphasize the 1960s narrative framework, common themes between the two stories, and the parallel between the two young protagonists. Corky’s love of reading and the librarian’s gift of Lee’s novel establish the novel’s thematic interest in Developing Consciousness Through Friendship and Literature. Through Corky’s passion for literature, Rutledge positions as a powerful tool with which to fight ignorance and expand a limited understanding. Corky loves reading new books and spends much time in the library. When she borrows To Kill a Mockingbird, a book about “childhood, a trial, and racism” (3), her curiosity intensifies. The book prompts Corky to ask difficult questions about things she does not know or understand, challenging the preconceived ideas and prejudices of the white adults in her life. For example, she asks her mother what rape is, but Belle avoids giving a response. Corky connects with her brother Mack, who’s exposed to and influenced by the social justice movements of the 1960s at his university: “After growing up in High Cotton, everything [Mack had] heard and seen on campus had opened his eyes” (37). Mack clashes with his father, who wants him to have financial security rather than pursue his dreams of a career in baseball. Mack uses the conflict with his father as a point of connection, extrapolating his desire for personal freedom to the larger, more significant context of racial justice. As he tells Corky, “everybody’s got a right to try filling their God-given potential” (37). Because Corky admires Mack, his stand against racial prejudice and perspective on the need for social change proves significant in Corky’s own journey.
Rutledge positions the moment Corky meets America as a turning point in her personal journey. At 16, America captivates Corky, who looks up to her as an older girl. Despite Corky’s innocence and ignorance, she approaches America with openness, asking her to play softball with her. The theme of Racial Justice and Women’s Rights in the 1960s emerges in the first conversation between the two girls. As a Black teen girl, America encounters constant racism in High Cotton. Their first conversation makes it clear to Corky that Black girls have a different experience in the world than white girls, pointing to an intersectional view of racial and gender discrimination in the 1960s. While America and Corky share a love of books, Corky realizes that “she’[s] never seen any Black people in the library” (21). Corky learns that Southside students only get the previous year’s schoolbooks used by Northside students. America impresses Corky and Mack with her athletic prowess. As there is no high school team for girls, Mack and Coach Trumbull wonder how to boost her potential because America is “faster than anyone on the High Cotton boys’ team had been for years” (28). Ultimately, Pastor Pete invites America to play with the Baptist softball team, initiating a transgressive event in the community—a Black girl joining an all-white team. Rutledge reflects the narrative significance of this event from America’s perspective as she prepares for practice and, like Corky, feels things are changing in her life: “Something new was happening, different than ever before, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it” (47). America’s presence challenges racial and gender prejudices in the rural Texas community.
Rutledge also explores gender discrimination in the period through Belle’s character. While her name is an allusion to the stereotype of the “Southern Belle,” Corky’s mother resists restrictive gender roles by claiming her right to work. She volunteers as a clerk at the library and wants to find a job, anticipating the shift tides of social change. She clashes with her husband Cal who believes “[a] woman’s place is in the home” (38), saying that “the new Civil Rights Act will include women” (35). Her husband views her solely as a wife and a mother, but the movement for gender equality during the 1960s helps her develop her own consciousness and resist prescribed gender norms. Observing her mother helps Corky begin to recognize the social standards that regulate women’s lives as discriminatory.
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