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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Another Brooklyn, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loss, Denial, and Grief
Friendship, Womanhood, and Support
Religion, Tradition, and Death
Racism and Classism
Summary
Analysis
In a session with August, Sister Sonja asks her when she first realized that her mother died. Thinking this question over, August lets her eyes travel to the windows behind Sister Sonja and notices that they’re blocked by metal bars. This causes her to wonder if anyone has ever run past Sister Sonja and jumped headlong out the window. Fixing her eyes back on Sister Sonja, she says, “Why do you think my mother has died?”
Because Another Brooklyn jumps around quite a bit in time, it’s hard to say whether this scene takes place before or after August finds Sylvia and Jerome in the park and realizes she has to stop denying that her mother is dead. Regardless, it’s worth examining the defense mechanisms August uses to avoid answering Sister Sonja’s question. To that end, her thoughts about people jumping out the window suggest that she would almost rather plunge out of the office than answer this question about her mother’s death. Instead, though, she simply sticks to her habit of denying reality, turning the question back on Sister Sonja rather than actually addressing what she knows is the truth, which is that her mother committed suicide.
Themes
August doesn’t see Sylvia for three months. When she finally does see her, she learns that her friend is pregnant, noting the way Sylvia’s stomach bulges slightly beneath her school uniform. But when Sylvia calls her name, August ignores her. She feels done with Brooklyn and is determined to leave, wanting to go to an Ivy League school where she’ll be able to experience new things. She’s tired, she says, of living in the neighborhood of Bushwick, where she and her friends are constantly called “ghetto girls.” Around this time, she stops avoiding the urn in her apartment. In fact, she takes it from its place on the bookshelf and finally looks inside. Her mother, August can now admit, “walked into the water.” With this in mind, August brings the urn into her bedroom and sleeps with one hand placed against its side.
By cutting Sylvia out of her life, August further estranges herself from the only thing that has supported her throughout her adolescence: her friend group. With Angela gone and Sylvia cast aside, only Gigi remains, meaning that August’s central source of companionship and happiness has significantly diminished. Without this support system, then, August is even less capable of denying her mother’s death, which is why she finally admits to herself that her mother committed suicide by drowning herself. In this sense, the dissolution of August’s friend group actually helps her come to terms with reality, since she no longer has any way of distracting herself from what she knows is the truth.
Themes
Gigi is cast as a prominent role in a play produced by her school’s drama club and she wants her friends to support her. Accordingly, she asks August if she’ll come sit in the front row with Sylvia, imploring her to let go of her grudge. Pleading with August to let things go back to normal, Gigi says that she’s going to save three seats—one for August, one for Sylvia, and even one for Angela, who she hopes will return. On the night of the performance, though, August puts on her coat but never makes it out of her house. Instead, she sits on her bed and thinks about the urn and about Sylvia’s pregnancy. Letting her mind whirl, she misses the entire play.
Although the weakening of August’s friend group enables her to face the reality of her mother’s death, this doesn’t mean she is emotionally better off without her friends. In fact, coming to terms with reality completely derails her. And because August has nobody to turn to for support, she finds herself unable to even leave the house, too overwhelmed to go to Gigi’s play. In turn, readers see that although August used her friend group as a way to distract herself from the truth, she still needs them to help her process her grief.
Themes
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August later learns that Gigi’s voice cracked during an important song, causing the entire audience to laugh. Worse, August isn’t the only person who didn’t show up—Sylvia didn’t come either, nor did Angela. When Gigi looked at the seats she had saved for her friends, then, she found them empty. That night, the cast had a party at the Chelsea Hotel, where Gigi jumped to her death from the 11th floor.
Gigi’s suicide might seem as if it comes out of nowhere, but it’s worth recalling the traumatic encounter she had with the veteran who raped her under the stairs in her apartment building. In the aftermath of that incident, she asked her friends, “What keeps keeping us here?”—a rather morbid question that calls attention to her desire to escape her own life. Carrying around this trauma, it’s clear that Gigi depends upon her friends to support her, which is why it’s such a big deal when none of them attend Gigi’s play and her voice cracks. This makes Gigi feel as if she doesn’t have what it takes to become famous, thereby ruining her lifelong dream of escaping her life and moving to Hollywood.
Themes
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