Towers Falling

Jewell Parker Rhodes’s novel Towers Falling was published in 2016. It takes place in Brooklyn in New York City and is told through the eyes of its protagonist, Dèja Barnes. Parker Rhodes is the author of several other children’s books, including Black Brother, Black Brother; Ghost Boys; and The Louisiana Girls trilogy. She currently serves as the Virginia G. Piper Endowed Chair and Director of the Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Set 15 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the novel grapples with their lasting effects on one girl’s family and community. Dèja Barnes is a fifth grader at a new school as it introduces a new curriculum addressing these events. She begins to discover a connection between the attacks and her father’s mysterious symptoms that keep him from helping his family through their homelessness.

This study guide refers to the 2020 edition published by Little, Brown and Company.

Plot Summary

Towers Falling opens at Avalon Family Residence, a shelter for those experiencing homelessness. The novel’s narrator and protagonist, Dèja, lives with her two siblings and both of her parents in one room of the shelter. Pop suffers from some sort of illness that makes it difficult for him to do anything, much less get a job. Because of their move into the shelter over the summer, Dèja is starting at a new school called Brooklyn Collective Elementary.

At Brooklyn Collective, Dèja is placed in Miss Garcia’s homeroom, where she meets another new student, Ben, and a “teacher’s pet” named Sabeen who quickly become friends with her despite Dèja’s initial skepticism. She begins to like her new school but feels overwhelmed. However, Miss Garcia and Ben try to support her.

Miss Garcia mentions that the school has implemented a new curriculum focused on the idea that “history is alive.” Dèja doesn’t believe this at first. Miss Garcia shows the class a picture of Manhattan and then asks them to compare it to the skyline outside the window. The students point out that the Twin Towers are missing. Dèja, who doesn’t know about September 11th, feels frustrated and doesn’t understand why she should care about something that happened in the past.

Their first assignment in the unit on 9/11 is to represent their homes. Miss Garcia tells Dèja that she doesn’t have to write about Avalon, but Dèja says that she will draw where she lives now. Over the weekend, she mentions the towers to her father, and he immediately expresses that he doesn’t want her to learn about September 11th. The mention of the attacks triggers his headaches, and it ruins the weekend for Dèja.

At school, she turns in a diorama and several connected paper dolls that her little brother Ray cut out. She snaps at Ben and Sabeen because she feels her project is ugly and she didn’t write the essay to go with it. Miss Garcia sends her to the principal’s office, though Dèja never actually sees Principal Thompson. Instead, Miss Garcia talks with her through the lunch period, and Dèja spends time writing her essay. Miss Garcia explains that Ray’s paper dolls were the best representation of home because they show that home is about the people in it.

When class resumes, Dèja draws a diagram of the different social units she belongs to, including her friends, family, school, city, and state. Miss Garcia teaches that them that everyone is connected and that’s why they should care about 9/11, because they share social units with the people who once worked in the Twin Towers. Dèja still isn’t convinced that learning about this is important.

When she and Sabeen go to Ben’s house to work on a history assignment, Ben finally explains to Dèja what happened and shows her a video of the planes hitting the Twin Towers. When she mentions learning about it to Pop, he decides to have her transferred to another school. However, her teachers convince him not to.

Dèja eventually figures out that Pop worked at the World Trade Center and was there the day that the planes hit. She and Ben decide to skip school to go see where the towers once stood because she thinks that it’ll help her understand him more and therefore be able to help her family. They go, but she doesn’t feel like it accomplishes her goal.

Pop is waiting for her when she gets off the subway, but he isn’t mad. He explains that he was in the towers and many of his friends and coworkers died. His illness comes from inhaling the ash and from the fear that he felt that day. Dèja feels bad for resenting him for not helping their family, and they agree to go back to the memorial together.

The novel closes with an essay by Dèja in which she explains that their family has gotten a new apartment and that Pop’s doctor gave him medicine to help. She emphasizes the importance of learning about history and how she is glad to live in her American home.