if you come softly by jacqueline woodson

Another student at Percy takes a photo of Ellie and Jeremiah on the steps of the school. When Jeremiah and Ellie begin their relationship officially, Jeremiah observes how they seem to go unnoticed by the people around them. In the park, Jeremiah recites Audre Lorde’s poem “If You Come Softly.” Ellie wonders if Jeremiah has always been coming toward her and this moment, and they kiss. Two white ladies passing by ask Ellie if she’s okay, and Jeremiah knows it’s because he’s with her. When Ellie comes upon Jeremiah in the hallway at school, they decide to cut class and walk to Central Park. Carlton assures Jeremiah that he is proof of this kind of relationship working.Įllie and Jeremiah silently pine for each other and keep their interest in one another a secret from their parents. Jeremiah realizes he can ask Carlton about interracial relationships because Carlton’s mom is white, and his father is Black. On the way home from school, Jeremiah meets up with his neighborhood friend Carlton. Jeremiah finally asks for her name, and she writes it down for him. One day, Jeremiah is transferred into her history class. Similarly, Ellie thinks about how naive she used to be about racism, and she wonders why there are no Black people in the spaces she and her family inhabit.Įllie still hasn’t seen Jeremiah since the day they met in the hallway. At basketball practice, Jeremiah observes the dynamics of the white and Black boys on Percy Academy’s team, and he remembers that girl in the hallway was also white. Anne is surprised and wants to protect Ellie from the pain and challenge of a relationship that is different. Both Ellie and Jeremiah are noticeably affected by the encounter, but they keep their admiration a secret from their respective mothers.Įllie is home alone when her older sister, Anne, calls from San Francisco and tells her about the Black boy she met. She walked home slowly from her first day at Percy Academy, thinking about the boy she crashed into in the hallway with a beautiful smile, hair, and face.

Ellie, a white girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, remembers the rainy day when she met Jeremiah. Everyone else’s thoughts echo through Jeremiah’s head, but he’s still unsure of who he is when he looks in the mirror.

Jeremiah, a Black boy in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, feels good in his skin, but he grew up around different ideas of what it was to be Black.

The rest of the novel takes place in a flashback, alternating between Ellie and Jeremiah’s points of view. Ellie tells her mother Marion that she dreamed about Jeremiah, and Marion tells Ellie to remember what she can. The novel begins with a prologue where Ellie wakes from dreaming about Jeremiah.

If you come softly by jacqueline woodson