44 pages • 1 hour read
Kai HarrisWhat the Fireflies Knew
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “June 1995”
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
KB tries to improve her circumstances. She decides that money will bring her family back together, and she is confident that she can get it. She searches for bottles to redeem to get the money to reunite the family, but unlike in Detroit, there aren’t any bottles on the roadside. Things aren’t much better with Nia. KB tries to atone by bringing caterpillars to her sister, including one that she names “Fuzz” and keeps in a jar provided by her grandfather. These efforts fail to charm Nia. KB is hurt when she overhears Nia calling her a brat during a conversation with Brittany, a friend who has arranged to stay with family in Lansing.
KB befriends the neighbor’s white children—Bobby and Charlotte—one day. The girl draws a racist picture that helps KB to see how this white girl sees her; KB likes her own hair and finds Nia’s coils hair to be beautiful, but Charlotte’s representation of KB’s hair is ugly. KB offers Anne of Green Gables to Charlotte, but Charlotte rejects the gift because mother thinks that the book is too mature for her. KB is used to reading such books. KB reads books from her grandfather’s shelves, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel about a woman’s quest for identity. Like Anne of Green Gables, the book includes luscious natural imagery and words that KB can’t understand. KB identifies with Janie, the protagonist, because she has lighter skin like KB, hair like Nia, and wants to take control over her own life. KB’s mother may also be like Janie because Janie loves Tea Cake even though Tea Cake harms her in some ways.
KB has so few good memories. She does remember the time the whole family went to Chicago so that her mother could attend job training. Although her mother promised sightseeing, she was too busy to go to the places that KB hoped to visit. Her father packed a picnic lunch instead and even took food to their mother, despite her mother’s failure to follow through on her promise. Her father took the lunch to Jacquee because “sometimes it’s worth it to give something so you can get something” (67).
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
KB is thrown into unfamiliar situations that force her out of her comfort zone. Nia convinces Granddaddy to take them to a public swimming pool. KB assumes that this is a peace offering, but Brittany is there when they arrive. Nia abandons KB to flirt with teen boys at the pool. Rondell, a handsome boy who claims that he is KB’s age, talks with her, and KB overcomes her shyness to play with other girls. Nia and KB go on another outing when Granddaddy takes them on a shopping trip at the mall. Nia ditches KB. KB buys the book The Secret Garden. She finds a dress, but it is too expensive. Granddaddy buys it for her. She realizes that he has a lot of money.
Granddaddy finally tells KB that her mother is in residential treatment for depression and not at the hotel as her mother implied. KB convinces her grandfather to let her call her mother. The conversation is brief, and KB can hear the sadness in her mother’s voice. KB feels betrayed as she realizes that the important adults in her life have kept this secret from her. After the call, Granddaddy pulls down a photo album that includes family pictures. Jacquee’s mother is in many of the earliest photos. There is one photo of 10-year-old Jacquee looking lovingly at a doll as her mother looks at her. Jacquee’s mother died shortly after that.
Granddaddy also tells her that Jacquee dreamed of being an actor as a teen. He disapproved. They had a falling out as a result. Granddaddy shows KB the headshot. He explains that he lost Jacquee because he failed to believe in her. These stories and the revelation that Granddaddy has money convince KB that she can get the family back together under one roof if Granddaddy and Jacquee reconcile. She calls her mother again and tells her about her grandfather’s remorse over the issue with the headshot. Jacquee yells at her and tells her that she shouldn’t get involved in adult conversations. Granddaddy did something worse than talk sternly to her.
Part 1, Chapters 3-4 Analysis
The events of these two chapters show KB as she assembles a multitude of texts through which to understand her life. She struggles with the fact that “[a]ll grownups do is lie” (18). KB also shows a dawning awareness of the impact of racism which underpins her Coming of Age.
There are multiple literal texts and figurative texts in this section of the novel, and Harris puts these texts to varied use. Anne of Green Gables becomes a material object that KB offers to cement a friendship with Charlotte. Charlotte rejects the text on the basis that the book is too mature, a point through which Harris juxtaposes the adultification of Black girls with racist ideas about the sensitivity and vulnerability of white girls. Furthermore, KB reads Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel that includes mature themes that may not be appropriate for a 10-year-old girl. Nevertheless, the book shows KB’s dawning awareness of Black girlhood as a social identity that a person can construct. The Secret Garden (1911), Frances Hodgson Burnett’s book about a little girl who becomes an orphan until her deceased father’s business associate rescues her, is another text about loss and redemption.
Other texts are less literal. The ugly chalk drawing that Charlotte makes of KB is one that helps KB to recognize the impact of race on how people view her identity. The drawing diminishes KB, who still doesn’t have the language to place that denigrating imagery in a larger social and historical context. Additional visual texts are the photographs of KB’s mother and grandmother. These texts shore up KB’s identity by helping her to locate herself in a larger family history that includes both caring for children and the loss of parents. The headshot of Jacquee as a teenager also reveals to KB that she has only a partial understanding of who her mother really is.
Nature itself becomes a text for KB. Like Janie Crawford from Their Eyes Were Watching God, KB finds in nature figures and phenomena that help her to understand her movement from early childhood to late childhood. When she looks at the caterpillar that she eventually dubs “Fuzz,” KB finds something in the natural world that is, like her, in the midst of a sometimes-painful transition. KB also attempts to use nature as a source of connection with Nia, but the effort proves futile since Nia insulates herself with her Walkman. Harris contrasts the natural with the machine to increase the sense of distance between Nia and KB. Other texts are life lessons, including ones that KB learned from her deceased father. His lesson about planning ahead is undercut by his inability to see beyond the horizon of his substance abuse.
Despite her exposure to these texts, KB is still a child. Because of the trauma of losing her family, her home, and father over the course of six months, KB attempts to assert control over her life by hatching a plan to reunite the family. Her plan—collecting bottles, convincing her mother that Granddaddy is sorry for his mistreatment of her—is stymied because of the Secrets and Lies of the adults around her. These bottles join the novel’s material imagery of childhood that grounds the adult themes in a child’s world. KB’s awareness of the lies achieve the opposite of reuniting the family. KB is aware that her mother isn’t in a Detroit hotel as she claims, and the lie undercuts KB’s belief in her mother’s infallibility. Her grandfather breaks this pattern of adults lying by omission in order to protect KB when he reveals the truth about where Jacquee is. As KB learns later, however, even Granddaddy lies. KB’s dawning awareness that even adults who love her will not always be straightforward is an important element of her coming of age.
