Previous
Michael
In “Aviation,” Sunni’s maa is taken into custody after supposedly threatening a woman at the store who she accused of staring at her. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, Sunni and his mother, who are Sikh, face rampant racial discrimination, and Sunni’s maa’s attack on the woman was her breaking point. With Sunni’s maa in custody, Sunni is placed with child protective services and is in the process of being placed in emergency foster care. It’s these circumstances that lead to the story’s present, with Antonio, a caseworker, and Sunni meeting with Mirabel to see if she’ll provide Sunni with emergency care.
Sunni’s Maa Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Sunni’s Maa or refer to Sunni’s Maa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Aviation
Quotes
Sunni used to climb over from their apartment’s balcony to the balcony of Bill and Susie’s place. It was a cheeky thing he did: surprising them with a visit, sneaking in through the sliding balcony door to leave a drawing he’d done of them, or some cookies he and his maa had baked. After the bad men in planes, Bill and Susie had stopped looking after him, stopped looking at him with kindness in their old-person eyes. […]
The next week, old Bill and Susie had put plants up against the concrete divide where their balconies joined Sunni’s place. Sunni pointed the beautiful pink flowers out to his mother.
“You can’t climb over and visit anymore,” she’d said, her voice shaking. “They’re poisonous flowers. That’s oleander.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Foreign Soil LitChart as a printable PDF.
Sunni’s Maa Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Sunni’s Maa or refer to Sunni’s Maa. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Aviation
Quotes
Sunni used to climb over from their apartment’s balcony to the balcony of Bill and Susie’s place. It was a cheeky thing he did: surprising them with a visit, sneaking in through the sliding balcony door to leave a drawing he’d done of them, or some cookies he and his maa had baked. After the bad men in planes, Bill and Susie had stopped looking after him, stopped looking at him with kindness in their old-person eyes. […]
The next week, old Bill and Susie had put plants up against the concrete divide where their balconies joined Sunni’s place. Sunni pointed the beautiful pink flowers out to his mother.
“You can’t climb over and visit anymore,” she’d said, her voice shaking. “They’re poisonous flowers. That’s oleander.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
