Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson

Is it worth feeling like an outsider to gain opportunities? Jade Butler is a young black woman in high school. She is not skinny or in shape, instead she has curves a creative soul that loves collaging. In her story Piecing Me Together, Jade hopes to someday venture off into a world greater than her own run down neighborhood in Portland, Oregon and she believes she can do so by learning a another language, Spanish.

I read this book April of this year and I wanted to revisit it. Throughout this cleverly titled novel the author Renée Watson depicts just how much the main character Jade and the supporting characters are much like Jade's favorite hobby collaging. Watson conveys through her words that at some point in our lives or throughout our entire lives, we are piecing ourselves together. Learning what makes who we are, what bothers us, and what we should do with our lives to accomplish any dreams we have.

This novel reminded me that teens need adults they can relate to especially in school and that even those that we think we can relate to and share the same cultural background with can be so much different than us depending on the environment they were raised in. I say that because in Jade's story, her family is poor and her white school guidance counselor doesn't truly understand what it is like for Jade to attend a mostly white private school where the families are predominantly wealthy. This guidance counselor is also the one who thinks Jade is the perfect prospect for a community program called Woman to Woman: A Mentorship Program for African American Girls, when Jade's actual dream is to be nominated for the schools study abroad program so that she can travel to a Spanish speaking country. Jade decides to participate in Woman to Woman and she is assigned a mentor, Maxine, who is not the best mentor in the beginning because she stands her up at the very first mentor/mentee meeting. Jade is weary about her mentor because she doesn't seem to be paying attention to her since she has her own life issues and is piecing herself together as well. It takes a while for Jade to accept Maxine, especially when she finds out that unlike herself, Maxine comes from a wealthy black family and has had a lot given to her. How could she relate to any of Jade's poor black girl struggles?

I thought it was good for Jade to have a mentor and I liked the relationship she and Maxine built and how it still created new opportunities for Jade even when she felt her dream was deferred. And I almost applauded when Jade confronted her Spanish teacher and asked him why she wasn't nominated for the study abroad program. His explanation was logical and it helped Jade come to peace with things she could not control. There are so many more details to this novel but these stuck out to me the most. This is a good book for young women to read and discuss, it made me want to start my own mentor program and share my life collage so far.

The pieces I am,

The Black Bibliophage