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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Copper Sun, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery, Dehumanization, and Resistance
Horror vs. Beauty
Friendship
Memory and Storytelling
Gender, Race, and Power
Summary
Analysis
One afternoon, Amari helps Teenie in her kitchen garden. Teenie points out medicinal plants, which makes Amari wish she’d paid more attention when Mother tried to teach her these things. Amari is very quiet after her night with Clay, which had been worse than usual. She asks Teenie if she has roots that kill, and Teenie quietly says she does—but she won’t show them to Amari. Teenie says that the overseer used to rape her. Eventually, the men move on, but then another slave woman has to suffer. Amari says she wants to die, but Teenie says that Amari was brought here for a reason. After a moment, Amari asks how long Teenie has been here. She’s shocked that Teenie was born here, but Teenie’s mother was from Africa. They sold her when Teenie was a teenager.
Here, Teenie makes it very clear that the sexual abuse Amari suffers won’t end with Amari. Once Clay gets tired of Amari, he’ll just choose another Black woman to rape—and until Black women are free, this will continue. By refusing to give Amari a poisonous plant with which to kill herself, Teenie insists that Amari has to stay alive so she can focus on the beauty. Staying alive also means that Amari will survive to pass on her own story, just as Teenie now passes on the stories of her mother.
Themes
Teenie says that her mother was a strong Ashanti woman. She told Teenie stories about the sun, which looked like a copper pot, and all the animals. Now, Teenie passes the stories on to Tidbit. Teenie reiterates that if they remember, nothing is ever really gone, and she pulls a small scrap of kente cloth out of her apron pocket. Amari is in awe. Teenie explains that when they kidnapped her mother, she tore a piece off of her mother’s headwrap and hid it until she got here. This is all Teenie has left of Africa. The women sit in sad silence for a minute.
It’s likely that Teenie never learned her mother’s native language, given how dangerous it can be to speak one’s native language in the colonies. In the place of that language, Teenie instead has her mother’s stories and this scrap of kente cloth. The scrap of cloth represents the tenacity and the power of abducted Black people—and it makes it clear that it is possible to keep their stories alive.
Themes
Amari asks how Teenie became the cook here. Teenie says that the first Mrs. Derby put her in charge right before she died, after the old cook tried to poison Mr. Derby. The first Mrs. Derby died giving birth to Clay, and Teenie thinks that maybe Clay is so evil because his mother wasn’t there to love him. Amari asks if Mr. Derby misses his first wife. Teenie figures he does; he was obsessed with her. She was cruel, however. After she died, Mr. Derby wouldn’t look at Clay until Clay was six or so. Amari asks why Mr. Derby married Mrs. Isabelle. Teenie doesn’t know, but she does know that Mrs. Derby has to put up with Clay and paintings of the first Mrs. Derby, and she has no contact with her friends. Teenie refuses to talk anymore. Amari sweeps and feels that her future is nothing but dust.
Despite being at the mercy of the Derby family’s whims, Teenie and Amari are nevertheless able to humanize and sympathize with their masters—in particular, with Mrs. Derby. To Teenie, Mrs. Derby is in a horrific predicament herself: though she may live in luxury, she nevertheless has to put up with the cruelty of Mr. Derby and Clay. Judging by Teenie’s descriptions, it seems that Mr. Derby is highly controlling and potentially abusive to his wife. It’s a testament to Teenie and Amari’s senses of compassion that they’re able to sympathize with a white woman who, by all accounts, is far more powerful than they are and is complicit in their enslavement.
Themes
