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28. Fail
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in With the Fire on High, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age and Teen Parenthood
Creativity vs. Professional Norms
Food and Connection
Caregiving, Independence, and Identity
Support, Community, and Mentorship
Summary
Analysis
That afternoon, ’Buela turns on the kitchen radio. It begins to play Marc Anthony, one of Emoni’s favorite singers. Then, ’Buela pulls out fresh herbs, hands Emoni a knife, and rinses a cutting board. When Emoni’s emotions are in such turmoil, she’s not sure what to cook and she lets her hands guide her. Pushing aside how angry she is—that Babygirl’s grandma insists Babygirl look like a doll before she accepts her granddaughter, that Culinary Arts is now her hardest class, that her job is so awful—Emoni chops and stirs. When she’s done, she discovers she’s made rice with black-eyed peas. The chicken is perfectly cooked without a thermometer, and the salad looks tasty.
This passage helps illuminate the emotional role cooking plays in Emoni’s life. She wants to cook professionally, but at this point, cooking is a beloved hobby and her own form of therapy. ’Buela’s quiet presence and her help in the kitchen also highlights that she’s an essential support person for Emoni. She supports Emoni as Emoni takes care of her own emotional needs and works through this difficult transition period. However, Emoni doesn’t seem to thank or acknowledge ’Buela at this point, suggesting that she may be taking ’Buela’s support for granted.
Themes
Following the culinary arts textbook guidelines for plating a meal, Emoni plates ’Buela’s meal. ’Buela closes her eyes as she tastes it and is in tears within moments. Normally, Emoni doesn’t ask people why they react to her food, but today, she asks ’Buela what she feels. ’Buela says she’s remembering wanting to leap into the ocean and swim away as a girl, but also being afraid the ocean would swallow her. She adds that the memory “warms [her] up” and reiterates that Emoni has magic. Relieved, Emoni realizes that she might not know how to properly store sugar, but she knows how to remind people that “food is meant to feed more than an empty belly.” A textbook can’t teach that.
Emoni might find Chef Ayden’s teaching methods demoralizing, but she is still learning from the class materials if she’s following her textbook’s plating guidelines. Still, as far as Emoni is concerned, making the meal look pretty (and proper food handling practices) aren’t nearly as important as what her food can do: connect people to their pasts, their homes, and to other people. That is, Emoni didn’t use a thermometer to cook the chicken tonight, but it’s more important to her that her dish elicited this emotional reaction from ’Buela.
Themes
