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Chapter 66
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 creates collages combining important figures from history. She puts Emmett Till with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, and Rosa Parks with Sandra Bland. Their faces sit on top of headlines that Jade rearranges to make new titles that allow these people to live and love.
Through these collages, Jade is able to empower these historical figures and help viewers of her work see them in a new light. In this way, she’s using images in much the same way she uses language: she’s gaining power and sharing it with others.
Themes
Jade shares more of York’s story. Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean in November of 1805. They returned to St. Louis the following spring. The others were considered heroes and they got land and double pay. After being trusted to carry a gun and make decisions, York didn’t even get his freedom: he asked for it, but Clark said no. York just wanted to be close to his wife in Kentucky and he wanted to feel human. Clark finally gave York his freedom in 1816. Jade wonders what it would’ve been like if York had gotten land, money, and freedom. She wonders if York would’ve done something with it and passed it onto his children. She remembers that a man in one of her workshops explained that this is how wealth works—but York had nothing to give.
What happened to York after Lewis and Clark returned east drives home how little power black slaves had. However, after Jade’s money management workshops, she also recognizes that freedom was just one of many things that York should’ve gotten that would’ve helped him better himself. If he’d received money and land, he would’ve had something to pass onto his children, but black people have historically been denied access to both of those things, even long after slavery ended.
Themes
