95 pages • 3 hours read
Piecing Me Together
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Themes
Intersectionality and Complex, Fragmented Identities
Through Jade’s character, Piecing Me Together explores how multiple identity categories—race, class, gender, size, ability, and age, among others—come together to form a singular, unique identity. Intersectionality is a particularly important concept when it comes to understanding systems of oppression in the culture—how certain categories of identity privilege some people and disadvantage others. In Piecing Me Together, Watson explores blackness, socioeconomic disadvantage, and girlhood—all identity categories that may subject an individual to systems of oppression. Jade’s relationships with Sam, Maxine, and Lee Lee all draw attention to the ways in which intersectional identity functions, such that the same person can have different, conflicting dynamics with the same person. Jade’s identity is fragmented, with certain pieces that bond her to Sam, Maxine, and Lee Lee, and others that drive her from them.
As African Americans, Jade and Maxine share a common understanding over race, especially as they have both been among the few black students in their classes at St. Francis. However, their socioeconomic differences—Maxine is from an upper-middle-class background, while Jade is from a low-income one—makes their experiences of life vastly different. In contrast, Sam and Jade are both socioeconomically disadvantaged, but Sam’s whiteness makes her oblivious to racial discrimination, as evidenced in Chapter 34 when Sam does not see that bias and stereotypes against black people drove Jade out of the mall store. Lee Lee and Jade share the same background in terms of race and class, but because Jade has a scholarship to St. Francis, they are on different paths in life—and therefore experience their blackness and their class differently.
Jade’s collaging and the “fragment” motif seen throughout Piecing Me Together reinforce the theme of intersectionality. In Chapter 21, Jade wonders if “a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone. I wonder if there’s ever a way for a girl like me to feel whole” (86). This statement alludes to the multitude of categories that make up Jade’s intersectional identity and the complex way they interact inside an individual. When the stereotypes and assumptions “rip” Jade apart, she must stitch them back together again, just as she does with her collages.
The Nature of Authentic Mentorship
Well-meaning but flawed mentors and misguided mentorship programs appear throughout Piecing Me Together. To best serve Jade and the mentees, Woman to Woman learns to listen to the needs of the mentees so that it functions in a way that truly empowers the girls. By the end of the book, Woman to Woman has undergone a major transformation and achieved a more authentic kind of mentorship: Taking Jade’s advice, the organization learns to practice a less condescending form of mentorship, in favor of one that listens to its members’ concerns and needs rather than simply try to “fix” them.
While Jade gets real, tangible benefits from the opportunities given to her by Mrs. Parker, she sometimes feels as though she cannot escape them. In Chapter 6, Jade ruminates on the experience of York and Sacagawea, who helped lead Lewis and Clark’s expedition; York was a leader on the expedition, but he was nonetheless enslaved. Paralleling her own experience, Jade wonders “how they [York and Sacagawea] must have felt having a form of freedom but no real power” (24). At the beginning of the book, Jade has freedom, especially with so many “opportunities,” but no real power to affect change.
As Jade grows over the course of Piecing Me Together, so too does Woman to Woman: What begins as a program that views its mentees as broken people turns into a community-based organization that treats the mentees with dignity and helps them overcome the challenges of navigating a racially biased world. Jade describes the feeling she gets when well-intentioned white individuals want to help her without really listening to her:
I try to let the music wash away that feeling that comes when white people make you feel special or stupid for no good reason. I don’t know how to describe that feeling, just to say it’s kind of like cold, sunny days. Something is discomforting about a sun that gives no heat but keep shining (149).
Woman to Woman moves away from this sort of advocacy over the course of the book. For example, in Chapter 39, Woman to Woman takes the girls on an extravagant outing to the symphony where the mentees are subject to stereotyping by a volunteer worker there; by the end of the novel, the organization had taken Jade’s suggestion to hold a practical series, called Money Matters, on how to manage personal finances, which is held in a local church in Jade’s neighborhood. Another positive change: Jade is empowered by being able to give knowledge to her community, not just receive. This is best exemplified in Chapter 65, when Jade decides she will support Woman to Woman by giving them one of her collages to auction off at a fundraising event: “I like being able to say I’m not just getting an opportunity from Woman to Woman, but that I am helping to keep it thriving. Don’t you think that’s a good thing?” (233).
The Unique Coming-of-Age Experience for Black Girls
Piecing Me Together underscores how racism in America profoundly shapes the coming-of-age experience for black girls. Racist incidents against African Americans are a constant occurrence in the book. There are incidents that directly involve Jade (for example, when she is confronted in the mall in Chapter 34 and when she is accused of being “unruly” by a lunch lady in Chapter 48); then there is the near-constant background of violence against African Americans in the news, most notably the crime against the black teenager Natasha Ramsey. In Chapter 55, Jade and Lee Lee are terrified when they see a black woman pulled over by a white police officer. For Jade, to grow up as a young black girl in America is to live in terror and a state of constant vigilance, feeling as though she might fall victim or bear witness to violence against African Americans.
Jade also struggles with her relationship to “opportunity,” as presented to her by well-meaning white people. As a low-income, black student at St. Francis, Jade is presented with many opportunities by the administrators there, from her involvement in Woman to Woman to SAT prep courses. While Jade does benefit, materially speaking, from these opportunities, she bemoans the exhausting experience of being regarded as an object of pity and a thing to be “fixed.” Unlike her white peers or her wealthy black peers, Jade is not able to simply be.
Poverty also shapes Jade’s experience growing up. Jade feels as though she needs a “way out” of her current situation, and she recognizes that language can help her realize her dreams: “To give myself a way out. A way in. Because language can take you places” (17). Having been impoverished her whole life, Jade knows that simply working hard will not guarantee her success: “I have never thought about my deserving the good things that have happened in my life. Maybe because I know so many people who work hard but still don’t get the things they deserve, sometimes not even the things they need” (58). In this passage, Jade recognizes that racist systems of oppression will never allow her mother to flourish, no matter how hard she works at her multiple jobs.
Jade feels trapped by her rigorous school/mentorship schedule and by the stereotypes that shape people’s expectations of her. A desire to be free defines her coming-of-age experience:
Sometimes I just want to be comfortable in this skin, this body. Want to cock my head back and laugh loud and free, all my teeth showing, and not be told I’m too rowdy, too ghetto. Sometimes I just want to go to school, wearing my hair big like cumulous clouds without getting any special attention, without having to explain why it looks different from the day before. Why it might look different tomorrow (201).
Piecing Me Together concludes with Jade imagining herself alongside the historical figure of York, both of them finally free: “Both of us black and traveling. Black and exploring. Both of us discovering what we are really capable of” (261).
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