P.S. Be Eleven

Written by Rita Williams-Garcia in 2013, P.S. Be Eleven is a historical fiction novel that is set in the late 1960s and features the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. Narrated from the perspective of Delphine Gaither, the eldest of three sisters, the work explores the importance of family relationships, the realities of Black childhood and identity, and the influence of Black power politics on children of this era. Williams-Garcia is an award-winning author whose works of historical fiction for children and middle grade readers focus on the experiences of Black people in the United States.

This guide refers to the 2013 Kindle edition published by the Amistad imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of racism, Islamophobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorder. Because the source text is set in the 1960s, it also makes use of the outdated term “Negro.” The guide has preserved this term in quotations only when its inclusion is necessary to enhance analysis and reflect the historical context of the story.

Plot Summary

In the late 1960s, sisters Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern Gaither return home to New York from a summer stay in Oakland, California, where their mother, Cecile, lives. During their stay, they learned all about Black pride. When the plane lands, Fern, the youngest sister, has to use the bathroom, so the girls run off the plane. They then violate the respectable decorum that their grandmother, Big Ma, taught them when they cut the line to the bathroom so that Fern can skip ahead of everyone else. Their actions anger a white woman and her two daughters who are waiting in line.

Big Ma arrives at the airport, and when she greets them, she criticizes Delphine for causing a spectacle that will reflect poorly on Black people; this is a constant fear for Big Ma. After a summer spent learning about Black pride, Delphine sees this attitude as a betrayal of her race. The family returns to their car, where their father is waiting for them, and Big Ma strikes Delphine for her behavior in the airport. In the car, Delphine notices that Pa (Louis Gaither) is a changed man who is now more attentive to his appearance. He does not spend the girls’ first night home with the family because he has a date with Marva Hendrix, a woman whom he later tells the family that he intends to marry.

Upon her return home, Delphine is preoccupied with the upcoming school year. Big Ma takes her shopping for school clothes at a discount store, and Delphine is disappointed when Big Ma picks out the usual babyish clothes. Delphine’s frenemy, Lucy Raleigh, shows up and convinces Big Ma to buy more modern clothes that will make Delphine less of a target for bullies and so-called friends. Meanwhile, Cecile keeps sending letters that encourage Delphine to be content with being young and free of adult responsibilities. Delphine is glad to be getting older, so she ignores her mother’s advice.

One night while watching television, Delphine and her sisters discover the all-Black boyband the Jackson Five. The upcoming Jackson Five concert in New York is all that anyone their age can talk about. Marva convinces Pa to let the girls go to the concert, but Pa says that he will only allow it if the girls can earn half the price of the tickets.

At Marva’s urging, Vonetta monitors the sisters—a development that makes Delphine uncomfortable because she is used to telling her sisters what to do. However, she worries that her dominant role may make her one of the oppressors that she learned about in Oakland over the summer. The younger sisters name the savings jar “the mummy jar” (90). When Delphine tries to borrow money from the jar to call a boy she met over the summer, her sisters refuse to cooperate. Delphine also turns 12 during this time.

School begins and brings its own difficulties as Delphine’s new teacher, the strict Mr. Mwile of Zambia, tells the students about Zambia and assigns them a paper on the topic. When Delphine gets her paper back, it has red marks all over it, including one that highlights her incorrect citation of the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “Ms. Merriam Webster.” Mr. Mwile criticizes her for believing that the author of the dictionary is a woman. Still intent on trying to impress Mr. Mwile, Delphine later asks him about a novel called Things Fall Apart, which examines the colonization of Africa; this is a book that Mr. Mwile constantly reads. Delphine tells him about her mother’s African name, Nzila, and is embarrassed when Mr. Mwile tells her that Cecile’s African name does not have the poetic meaning that Cecile says it does. Delphine writes her mother to accuse her of lying, but Cecile tells Delphine to stick to worrying about children’s concerns.

At school, Delphine begins to work on a group project with Rukia, Ellis Peters (who picked on Delphine in the past by ridiculing her name), and Danny the K, who also picks on Delphine. For the project, the group follows Rukia’s suggestion to form a debate about whether a woman is suited to be president. The boys in the group think that the idea of a woman being the president is laughable, and the idea is shocking to Delphine as well. The students also learn the date of the annual sixth-grade dance—Valentine’s Day. Delphine fears that she will have no one to date.

Darnell, Delphine’s uncle, returns home from fighting in the Vietnam War, and it is obvious that the war has negatively affected him. He spends all night pacing and wakes the family with his nightmares. At school, Danny the K ridicules Delphine over Darnell’s illness. On top of everything else, people at school brag about having already bought their Jackson Five tickets. Delphine and her sisters are close to saving half the ticket price.

Pa marries Marva, who brings new ideas and energy into the household. She celebrates the election of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to win a seat in the United States Congress, and she also encourages Delphine to see women as being capable of anything.

Matters at home come to a head when Pa tires of Darnell’s lack of financial contribution to the family. The girls experience a blow when Darnell steals the money from the mummy jar and leaves home. Delphine realizes that her uncle stole the money to buy drugs, and Pa refuses to replace the money because he believes that his daughters need to learn that life isn’t fair, even for hard workers. Delphine faces off with her father to defend her sisters from this injustice, but Pa is unmoved. When Marva intervenes, he tells her that he is the only one who can make parenting decisions, so she leaves as well. Big Ma also leaves to seek comfort at the home of Frieda Banks, one of Delphine’s close friends. The next day at school, Delphine realizes that Frieda has been gossiping to everyone about what she overheard from Big Ma. This important friendship appears to be over.

Thanksgiving comes, and for the first time, Big Ma does not prepare the traditional Thanksgiving dinner because Darnell’s struggles are too much for her to handle. She just sits silently with her Bible in her hands. Marva returns to make a more informal dinner. Big Ma decides to return to her native Alabama but reassures the girls that she will see them again. When winter comes, Marva gives Delphine her first grown-up piece of clothing—a royal blue coat with rabbit-fur trim. Frieda and Delphine reestablish their friendship when Frieda tells Delphine that she loves the coat.

Eventually, the night of the dance comes. Pa drives Delphine to the dance and asks if she would rather go to the movies with him instead. She declines, but she does ask why her father and Cecile did not marry and stay together. He refuses to answer her. Despite her lack of a date, Delphine has fun with her friends and even does a slow dance with Ellis Carter.

The novel ends with Darnell sending a Jackson Five album to the girls. He is now getting help for his substance use disorder at a military hospital. Delphine loves singing and dancing to the album with her sisters because she knows that such moments will soon come to an end. She reflects that no one—not even Michael Jackson, who sings songs about love and loss—understands all that the Gaither sisters have survived.