Books Analysis: One Crazy Summer

The book One Crazy Summer is a book that follows an 11-year-old girl named Delphine who had just gone to Oakland to meet her mother. This story goes through lots of ups and downs, and Delphine also learns and develops a racial identity and how she wants to be treated because of her skin color. For the most part, the book is good, and I would recommend it to teens around the age of 13-15. This book also demonstrates how to be a role model and to be kind no matter what. The author of the book is named Rita Williams-Garcia, and she has made a trilogy of the same type of books. But the main event of this book is her meeting her mother, going to the black panther/people’s center, learning about the movement and joining it, going to a rally, and presenting a poem called "I birthed a black nation.

When she was on the plane, everyone was looking at her and there were maybe 6 other colored people on the plane other than her and her sisters. Once she got to Oakland, she saw that Cecile lived in a green stucco house in a small neighborhood. But there were many kids playing at the park and having fun. They were also close to a people’s center where they served free breakfast for kids who maybe couldn’t afford it or couldn’t get access to it. Delphine did not know that this people's center was a place where the black panthers lived, and where they taught kids about them and their movement.

Delphine visits the people's center, but when she goes there, she listens and learns that colored people are being mistreated; that it is unfair. Delphine had read the newspaper and learned more about the black panther movement and what it stood for. This causes Delphine to understand that she should not have to do more than white people just to be treated the same way. “They shot him just for being on the black panther’s side”. Delphine learns about her rights and what she stands for. When she goes to ask to put up posters for the black panther movement, they don’t allow her to put them up. And with that she vows to never support or buy from a store that did not put the posters up. My reasoning is that throughout the book, you can slowly see growth in what Delphine believes and how she further understands racism against colored people. And she learns this because she teams up with the black panthers. You can see a lot of growth in what Delphine feels is racism to her and what is not.

Delphine fully understands what her rights are and what she wants to help change. My evidence for this is that Delphine does not want to go to the rally because she thinks that it is dangerous. But she understands that if she wants to help and keep the black panther movement alive, she's going to have to help in any way possible. This shows a lot of growth in what Delphine knows about her rights because she knows that risks are involved to get something that you want. “I’ve been fighting freedom for all of my life”. My reasoning for this is that at the start of the book, if someone called her a bad word, she wouldn’t think that it was abnormal. But by the end of the book, she would know that she should be respected even though she is colored.

Delphine had grown in many ways, but the biggest way she grew was in how she thought about her racial identity and how people treated her. People treated her differently because she knew what she was worth, and she should be treated. This grew the most because you could tell that at the start of the book, she didn’t know what it meant to have a racial identity. But now she can continue learning about her identity and can maybe even teach other kids about it, too. "I made a vow to never buy from a store that does not put our black panther poster up". And that’s because she does not want to be mistreated just because of her skin color, and she wants to change that by joining the movement. This relates to the real world because this was based on a true story and this was happening back in the 1960s.