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Chapter 23
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
At home, Jade finds a $20 bill and a note from Mom, telling Jade to buy herself dinner. Jade decides to go to Dairy Queen. Lee Lee isn’t home, so Jade hops on the bus by herself. The restaurant is packed. Jade orders and steps to the side. She can hear a group of boys at a table, talking about which of their friends they’d date. Then, they turn to women in the restaurant. They assess Jade. One says she’s a five, another says that Jade is big enough to break the scale, and other says he likes big girls.
Even more than trying to fit in Kennedy’s car did, these boys force Jade to confront her size—as well as the fact that because she’s female, she’s vulnerable and she’d potentially be putting herself in danger if she talked back to these boys. Language, in this case, has the power to make Jade feel small, insignificant, and vulnerable, and Jade doesn’t feel comfortable using her own voice to protect herself.
Themes
Jade gets her food and leaves, deciding not to eat at Dairy Queen. She wonders who teaches boys to reduce girls to parts and catcall them. One boy yells for Jade to stop, but she ignores him. He calls her names and he says she should be on a diet. The bus is packed and Jade waits until she gets home to eat since she thinks nobody wants to see a big girl eat a burger. She saves her bag to make into a dress or a crown for a confident girl in one of her collages. Jade decides on a huge, imposing crown. In the background of the collage, in Spanish, she writes the things the boy could’ve called her: daughter, friend, artist, scholar.
Jade’s collage is a way for her to transform an awful experience into something that reminds her of who she wants to be. In this situation, she can use language to put these identities front and center and ignore the awful things the boys said to her. That Jade does this after the boys harass her shows just how hard she has to work to piece her identity together. She constantly has to deal with others’ assumptions about who she is—and she must constantly work to think of herself in a positive way.
Themes
