# data[].attributes.body
"I think it was when he gave me a few dollars to buy us hot dogs that I noticed the couple. They were walking a dog-a small gray terrier-and they were older, well-dressed...They continued to watch me as I brought the hot dog to my father, then ran back to the cart to get us napkins, which I had forgotten...They were talking to two men in uniform, the police on their beat, and then the four of them were trudging across the grass in our direction."

REACTION: I was really angry when I first read this. At the same time, however, I was scared for Birdie's father. I thought the police would arrest Birdie’s father and have him serve jail time. I find it crazy because if they did charge him for kidnapping a little girl, then Birdie’s father would honestly be there for 10+ years or for life. Which is why I was angry because I couldn’t believe it was happening. It wasn’t even the old couple's business. They should’ve just kept walking.

# data[].attributes.body
"Although he had barely seemed to notice the other time I had stayed home, that day he seemed particularly disturbed that I wasn't coming along with them...Ordinarily, he was distracted when talking to me, but at that moment he was all there...'You're my baby girl. I want to spend time with you, sweets. And I don't know when I'm going to get a chance again soon."

REACTION: When I first read this I wanted to cry. Obviously this was foreshadowing what would happen next. Birdie would go live with her mother and Cole would go with her father. In this passage, it is made clear that Birdie’s father knew what was going to happen and wanted to spend time with his youngest daughter. However, Birdie did not want to spend time with her father because of his new girlfriend. That would end up being the last time Birdie saw her father. Which I think will be a while before Birdie will see her father and sister. It might be years

# data[].attributes.body
"Before I ever saw myself, I saw my sister. When I was still too small for mirrors, I saw her as the reflection that proved my own existence."

REACTION: I really liked the introduction. It shows the innocence that one as a kid has before everything is sort of ruined. This quote shows what Birdie used to think before her perspective changed. Before reality struck. All she thought about was her sister and herself. Sure, her mother was also someone to look up to but I think little kids especially look up to their older sibling.

# data[].attributes.body
"Things unravel. Slowly. Without warning. We all had been going through our separate changes for a while. Moving in different directions. My mother disappearing into the basement. Cole disappearing into her adolescence. Me into my life with the Brown Sugars clique at Nkrumah. My father into his book."

REACTION: This is the part of the text where people start going their different ways. They start doing their own thing. It’s crazy to think that this also happens in families. I thought it would take longer for them to go their separate ways. I was wrong. It’s sort of disappointing to read that this had happened. It wasn't something that I thought would really happen until after Birdie was 18.

# data[].attributes.body
“Something else changed in New Hampshire, something I never told anyone for fear of being called crazy and sent away, like a girl I had seen on an after-school special. It was simply a sensation I had at times, when I experienced a sense of watching myself from above...I would think, ‘You,’ not I,’ in those moments, and as long as the girl was 'you,’ I didn’t feel that I lived those scenes, only that I witnessed them.”

REACTION: While reading this I felt that I could relate to what was being said. There are times when I am out of it or basically not feeling well. It's like I'm there physically but mentally I am in someplace else. I'm not thinking straight. I think for Birdie since she has been living a lie you can say, she is obviously going to feel different. There is another part of her, the old her that lived in Boston, that is trying to break free but can't for her own safety. Maybe it can be said that Birdie is living in the past.

# data[].attributes.body
“Looking at those photographs, I remembered how my parents had never said ‘I love you’ to each other. How they had said only ‘I miss you.’ At the time, I hadn’t been able to figure out what this meant. But now it seemed clear: this was how they defined their love--by how deeply they missed each other when they were together. They felt the loss before it happened, and their love was defined by that loss...That was how my parents loved each other, with a desperate, melancholy love, a fierce nostalgia for the present.”

REACTION: I think Birdie's parents were only together for the sake of both Cole and Birdie. They both had different things going on and kept clashing over their differences. I think they both realized that it was never going to work out. Not with how judgemental everyone was. Especially with the racism they were going to eventually face.

# data[].attributes.body
"She was your favorite. Wasn't she? You loved her the best. Both you and Papa did. She was the one you both wanted to keep." Now that I had spoken it, it seemed so clear. Cole was the one my father and mother had fought for, not me. I was the one they both knew they could have without asking.

pg. 275-276
RESPONSE: When I thought about this question, I wasn't sure how to really respond. Birdie is obviously going through something emotional after not being with her father and sister for a while. It's going to eventually cause tension with her mother. This question is important

# data[].attributes.body
"I wondered, as I passed the clear abandoned lake--silver, still, silent--if I too would forever be fleeing in the dark, abandoning parts of myself that I no longer wanted, in search of some part that had escaped me. Killing one girl in order to let the other one free. It hurt, this killing, more than I thought it would, but I kept walking, repeating a pattern of words under my breath, words that I no longer understood but whispered just the same. kublica marentha doba. lasa mel kin."

pg. 289
RESPONSE:(Aha Moment) During this part of the chapter, Birdie realizes that she can no longer keep running with her mother. She wants to be herself. She doesn't want to pretend anymore. She can't. She wouldn't be able to handle it. She's barely holding on to that one piece of her old life, elemeno, the language she and her sister created. This is important because, with this realization, Birdie is finally going to look for her father and her sister.

# data[].attributes.body
"My father had told me once that those lines were racial codes. He said green led to Jews in Brookeline and Newton. Red to Cambridge Wasps. The blue and the purple to the suburbs, where the Irish and Italian townies lived. And the orange line, he had told me, led to Chocolate City. To Dorchester and 'the Berry.' Roxbury. To your people, he had said."

pg. 296
RESPONSE:(Memory Moment) This memory was from when Birdie was still with her father and how she listened to every word he said. I think this memory is important because Birdie had just arrived in Boston at the train station after running away from her mother in New Hampshire. As I predicted, Birdie could no longer handle being away from her father and her sister. This means that she will now embark on a journey in search of them. Which means going back to her home, Boston. It also means no longer pretending to be someone she is not.

# data[].attributes.body
"So I spoke as if in a trance, staring not at him but straight ahead, at the dome of the State House as if it were a crystal ball that had hypnotized me, had made me speak these forbidden words. I was conscious all the same that I was breaking the rules, and my fingers trembled so badly I had to sit on my hands. But I kept talking, telling this truth, and it felt unnatural to do it. The words seemed flat and unimaginative in their factual accuracy."
pg. 343

# data[].attributes.body
AUTHOR OF CAUCASIA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences