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Chapter 33
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Piecing Me Together, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Intersectionality, Identity, and Discrimination
The Power of Language
Mentorship, Opportunity, and Dignity
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Jade has been so busy that Sam starts to feel ignored, but today, Jade has nothing to do. The girls decide to go to the mall so Sam can shop. Jade is glad she doesn’t have money since she can’t fit any of the clothes anyway. She’s shocked that Sam can pick up clothes, hold them up, and see if they’re going to fit. Sam picks up so many clothes that a clerk takes Sam’s things to start a dressing room. The clerk turns to Jade and asks if she needs help, but she doesn’t find Jade’s joke that she can’t fit into anything funny. Instead, the clerk tells Jade not to loiter. Jade walks to the back of the store to look at purses but she gets distracted by a jewelry display.
Keep in mind that Jade and Sam are in a similar socioeconomic bracket; the only thing differentiating them here is their size and their skin color (though Sam seemingly has more money than Jade, seeing as she can afford an afternoon of shopping). The clerk, however, seems to hold a racist view of Jade as inherently suspicious because she’s black; the clerk unwilling to consider that Jade is here to be a good friend to Sam and that she has no interest in stealing.
Themes
The clerk finds Jade again and she asks to put her bag behind the counter or leave. Other white women around have purses with them, so Jade refuses to check her bag. As she leaves the store, most of the white women look away. One woman stops by Jade on her way out of the store, says that what the clerk did was wrong, and suggests that Jade write to the manager. Sam emerges a while later and she is shocked to hear what happened. She holds up her backpack, which she got to take into the dressing room, and she points out that it is a little smaller than Jade’s bag. Jade is shocked and hurt as Sam continues to defend the clerk for doing her job. Jade can’t decide if the mistreatment is worse than having to prove to her friend that it happened.
If Sam had come out of the store and been just as hurt and incensed as Jade, it would’ve softened the blow of this racist incident. Instead, Sam compounds Jade’s hurt and trauma by essentially insisting that it wasn’t racist, or that Jade is making things up. Though Sam later admits that she’s extremely uncomfortable and she doesn’t know what to say here, she’s being an awful friend by not even listening to Jade, acting sympathetic, or taking Jade’s concerns seriously.
Themes
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