The Plot
The novel is actually rather plotless, best described as a series of connected scenes and events serving the unified purpose of thematic exploration. But there is an underlying story mechanic at work. And it just so happens that metaphor is used early on to suggest that “plot.”
“I had been home a month watching my father die. Death didn’t frighten me. Not now. Not anymore. But Brooklyn felt like a stone in my throat.”
Memory
The narrative is structured as recollection of the past by an author with the perspective of age and maturity. This accounts for the episodic nature of the plotting mechanics. Memories as they will and are dealt with as remembered. Everything is a backstory and the very process of writing from memory intensifies the probably of metaphorical language filling in the gaps of literal description left unrecalled:
“We lived inside our backstories. The memory of a nightmare stitched down my brother’s arm. My mother with a knife beneath her pillow. A white devil we could not see, already inside our bodies, slowly being digested. And finally, Sister Loretta, dressed like a wingless Flying Nun, swooping down to save us.”
Sexuality and Prayer
The narrator is recollecting a time when she and her girlfriends were just moving into maturity. Some had gotten their periods already, others still waited. And always around them boys and men starting lustfully. Natural desire meets shame and confusion and is hardly helped much by the assistance of Sister Loretta:
“I prayed that my own brain, fuzzy with clouded memory, would settle into a clarity that helped me to understand the feeling I got when I pressed my lips against my new boyfriend, Jerome, his shaking hands searching my body.”
Sexuality and Power
The development of their bodies from children into pre-teens with the excitement of full-scaled teenagerhood almost within striking distance serves both to confuse the girls and to empower them. The predatory stares of the boys and men is frightening on one level, but they intuitively half-understand that it somehow also gives them power over them as well:
“Something about the curve of our lips and the sway of our heads suggested more to strangers than we understood. And then we were heading toward thirteen, walking our neighborhood as if we owned it.”
The Other Gaze
The gazes which fall upon the developing bodies of August and her friends are primarily ravenous and lustful. But there are other types of male gazes, she discovers one day while walking to church with her father. The language at first immediately sounds a warning signal, but just as quickly that warning signal is dismissed August is introduced to yet another emotion regarding her body:
“The man looked at me, his eyes moving slowly over my bare legs. You’re a black queen, he said. Your body is a temple. It should be covered. I held tighter to my father’s hand. In the short summer dress, my legs seemed too long and too bare. An unlocked temple. A temple exposed.”
