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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Skin I’m In, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bullying and Insecurity
Self-Esteem, Support, and Friendship
Writing and Self-Expression
The Importance of Role Models
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Charlese doesn’t come to the bathroom in the morning, so Maleeka is forced to keep her own clothes. Maleeka knows that Charlese is punishing her. Before class, Maleeka reads Life of a Slave Girl, which Miss Saunders gave her to help with her writing. When the late bell rings, a teacher tells Maleeka to get to class and pick up a paper she dropped—it’s one of Akeelma’s letters. In this letter, Akeelma writes that she watched another girl steal the last of her food, explaining, “she is a lion who cares for no one but herself.”
Miss Saunders fosters Maleeka’s writing talent by giving her Life of a Slave Girl (a fictional homage to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl) pushing her to live up to her potential. Meanwhile, Maleeka’s writing continues to reflect her own life. The girl who steals Akeelma’s food mirrors Charlese, and Maleeka demonstrates that she understands (even if unconsciously) that Charlese only cares about herself. Withholding the clothes, which allow Maleeka to be accepted by her peers, shows that Charlese has no interest in actually supporting Maleeka— she simply wants to manipulate her.
Themes
When Maleeka gets to Miss Saunders’s class, John-John stops her and comments on her “new clothes.” Thinking of Akeelma, Maleeka asks him why he’s always picking on her. She tells him that the song he sings about her isn’t right. John-John tells Maleeka that she’s always acted like she’s better than him: in second grade, when Maleeka first started at the school, the teacher told her to sit next to John-John. But Maleeka said that she wanted to sit up front, next to Caleb (who has lighter skin) instead. Presently, Maleeka tells John-John she didn’t care about Caleb—she only wanted to sit up front because she couldn’t see the blackboard. John-John says that Maleeka still gave him plenty of reasons not to like her. Maleeka and John-John arrive in the classroom, but Miss Saunders isn’t there yet. Maleeka is excited to have a substitute teacher, but just then, Miss Saunders rushes into the room.
Clothes continue to symbolize Maleeka’s acceptance at the school: without Charlese’s nice clothing, Maleeka is again picked on for the ones her mother sews. Additionally, John-John’s story sheds more light on his motivation for bullying Maleeka. He was insulted by the fact that she wanted to sit next to someone with lighter skin rather than next to him, illustrating how his bullying stems from his own insecurity over his worth and his Blackness. Even when Maleeka corrects this misconception, John-John refuses to change his behavior, demonstrating how something that happened to him five years earlier has made a deep impact on him.
Themes
