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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
August recalls how unsettling it was when her mother used to urge her to eat because there were children starving to death in Biafra. This was in 1968, before August’s brother was born, and August didn’t know what Biafra was nor why children were starving. But years later—“long after Biafra melted back into Nigeria, the country from which it had fought so hard to secede”—August finds magazines on the kitchen table in Brooklyn and sees a picture of two children standing under a headline that reads “STARVING CHILDREN OF BIAFRA WAR.” Looking at their distended stomachs, August realizes that her mother was telling the truth when she spoke about the starving children of Biafra, though August still doesn’t know what to make of this information. All she knows is that, though her family is poor, they still have food and are healthy, unlike the children in the picture.
August’s relationship to the war between Biafra and the Nigerian government is remote, but it connects to her memories of her mother, who apparently followed the conflict closely. It’s possible that August has such a vivid memory of her mother talking about Biafran children because she herself now feels totally abandoned by her mother—if her mother was capable of worrying so much about children on a different continent, August might wonder why she wouldn’t worry enough about her own children to follow them to Brooklyn. Of course, this is a rather callous analysis of her mother’s empathy for the starving children of Biafra, but it’s hard to overlook the fact that—due to August’s mother’s mental instability—her mother hasn’t shown August the same level of concern as she exhibited for the Biafran children, though there are obviously multiple factors at play that explain why this is the case. Nonetheless, though, August surely feels the painful lack of her mother’s presence and concern, regardless of the reasons.
Themes
One day, a woman from child services comes to August’s building and delivers two young children to Jennie, who joyously yells out that her “babies” have returned. Ecstatic, she asks August to watch the two children while she runs out to get food. August agrees, taking the children into her apartment and trying with her brother to get them to stop crying. Jennie doesn’t return for many hours, and when she does, her eyes are red and she keeps scratching her arms. What’s more, she doesn’t come upstairs to fetch her children, so August and her brother bring them down to her. That night, they can hear the children crying.
Once again, readers see that addiction is all around August. Even though Jennie is apparently happy that her children have been returned to her by child services, she fails to come home, instead prioritizing her apparent drug addiction. This puts August in an uncomfortable position, as she suddenly finds herself caring for Jennie’s children even though she herself is still quite young. What’s more, Jennie’s absence undoubtedly reminds August of her own lack of maternal support. In this sense, then, the environment in which August lives constantly reminds her of what she’d most like to forget: her mother’s illness and absence.
Themes
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