ONE CRAZY SUMMER, by Rita Williams-Garcia

            Williams-Garcia, R. (2010). ONE CRAZY SUMMER. Amistad.

 

Eleven-year-old Delphine, nine-year-old Vonetta, and seven-year-old Fern, live in Brooklyn, New York. However, the girls’ father sends them to Oakland, California one summer to stay with their estranged mother, Cecile, who refers to herself as Nzilla. Cecile abandoned her children when Fern was a baby. Their grandmother always called her self-centered and crazy- not the motherly type. When the girls arrive at the California airport, Cecile meets them, and she is every bit what their grandma had said. Shed forbids them to enter her kitchen, which is Cecile's workplace. She prints her poetry here on her printing press, along with the occasional publication for the Black Panther Party. Every day she would send the girls to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. This is where they meet Sister Mukumbu. The three sisters get taught about the movement. Mukumbu explains what the movement does like feeding the poor, helping poor African Americans, and protecting African American communities. The Black Panther member Bobby Hutton has been shot and killed by police, and one of their founding members, Huey Newton has been wrongfully jailed. The children at the center will soon participate in a rally to protest these injustices.

After a day trip to San Francisco, the sisters return home to find their mother Cecile and two members of the Black Panther Party being arrested. Cecile tells the police she has no children, for she doesn't want the girls to be involved, so the girls pretend to live next door. Soon a friend from the Center, Hirohito, comes for the girls and allows them to stay with him and his mother until Cecile return.

Later at the rally,  the girls perform a poem their mother wrote, which they found while cleaning the kitchen after her arrest. After their recital, Fern takes the microphone and tells the Black Panthers how she saw one of their most vocal members, with the police, which gets him in trouble with the party members.

At the rally, the sisters see their mother has been released from jail and return home with her. Though Delphine and Cecile's relationship remains strained, Cecile tells Delphine how she lost her mother at the age of eleven and had a rough life thereafter. She tries to explain why she left her children, but Delphine is still too young to understand. The next day, the girls return home, after finally hugging their mother.

This story is a wonderful example of Historical Fiction. Young people are taught about the Civil Rights movement in the classroom, but this book puts a whole new perspective on African American injustice in America in the late 1960s. You always hear how much chaos the Black Panthers created. But this book shows some of the good they did for their communities. There are a multitude of themes be found in this book. In 1968 it was a radical time for black history,  and the portrayal of the Black Panther ideals helps to prompt discussions of civil rights injustice, black pride, and racial prejudice.

There are many cultural markers in the book. One scene that stands out to me is when Cecile overhears Delphine tell her sisters that their hair is “misbehaving,” and that Big Ma wouldn’t like the way they present themselves to society. Cecile informs her daughters that their hair isn’t misbehaving–it is doing what it is supposed to do, naturally. She encourages them to embrace their hair and see how beautiful it is in its natural state. The girls heed Cecile’s advice and embrace their newfound hair, wearing afro puffs even when they return to Brooklyn. 

There are at least two places in the book where the girls are made a spectacle of just because they are black. Just before they deboard the plane in California, a white stewardess tries to give them some change for being “such adorable dolls and so well behaved.”  Delphine politely refuses. The other instance was when the girls had their adventure in San Francisco. They were in Chinatown and came across a very white family “When I turned, I found the five people smiling at us, their faces made long by high cheekbones and long, white teeth. They waved. I’d seen white people before. On TV. At school. Everywhere. These people didn’t look like any white people I had ever seen. Even their skin was paler, their hair more white than yellow.” “Then, instead of taking pictures of all the Chinese people and temples and dragons, they pointed their cameras at us.”

 

National Book Award finalist (2010)

Coretta Scott King Award (2011)

Newbery Medal Honor (2011)

Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction (2011)

 

Goodreads: “The writing is poetic and simple, the characters are unforgettable, the social-historical references delicate, and the overall story a pleasure to read. The book doesn't finish with a perfectly happy ending, but it is a perfect ending. “

Publisher’s Weekly: “ Instead of taking her children to Disneyland as they had hoped, Cecile shoos them off to the neighborhood People's Center, run by members of the Black Panthers. Delphine doesn't buy into all of the group's ideas, but she does come to understand her mother a little better over the summer. Delphine's growing awareness of injustice on a personal and universal level is smoothly woven into the story in poetic language that will stimulate and move readers.”

 

ONE CRAZY SUMMER is the first book in the Gaither Sisters Series. The second book, P.S. BE ELEVEN was published in 2013, (ISBN  978-0061938641) and features the girls returning to their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The third book, GONE CRAZY IN ALABAMA was published in 2015, ( ISBN 978-0062215895) and features the sisters visiting their relatives in Autauga County, Alabama. The two sequels were also winners of the Coretta Scott King Award.