37 pages • 1 hour read
Jacqueline WoodsonIf You Come Softly
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Ellie still hasn’t seen Jeremiah since the day they met in the hallway, and one day, she is about to give up hope when Jeremiah transfers into her history class. Jeremiah spots her, chooses to sit next to her, and looks in her textbook with her. When she asks why he transferred, he explains that he “knew it already;” the school had placed him in a remedial history class without asking (75). He shares that it feels like “more than a coincidence” when stuff like this happens: It feels like it must be his hair and “the melanin thing” (75, 76). When Ellie understands what he means, she hopes the world isn’t like this, but she wonders if it actually is. Jeremiah finally asks for her name, and she writes it down for him as they get in trouble with their teacher for talking.
Chapter 8 Summary
Jeremiah meets up with his neighborhood friend Carlton on the way home, and they chat about basketball, Brooklyn Tech, and Percy Academy. Jeremiah realizes he can ask Carlton about interracial relationships because Carlton’s mom is white, and his father is Black. Carlton talks about the looks he and his parents get on the street when they walk together and shares that his sister probably went to college in England to escape it all. Jeremiah tells him he met a white girl, and now he feels like he doesn’t know “nothing about nothing,” but Carlton says it sounds like Jeremiah’s in love (88). Jeremiah never thought about dating a white girl before, and Carlton assures him saying, “Look at me, it happens. It’s not the worst thing” (89).
Chapter 9 Summary
At home, Ellie and her dad talk over his copy of the New York Times, remembering their tradition of reading the paper together as she grew up. He says that he spoke with her sister Anne, and he asks if there’s a boy in her life, but Ellie says, “there isn’t a boy,” just “a guy she met” (94). She explains how she met Jeremiah in the hallway, now they sit next to each other in class, and he seems nice. Ellie’s dad finally decides he “doesn’t see a reason why [they] couldn’t be friends” (95). Ellie doesn’t mention Jeremiah is Black and wonders to herself if this is lying to her dad. She also wonders what it’d be like to kiss Jeremiah.
Chapter 10 Summary
Home alone, Jeremiah looks at his mother’s pictures and is pained when he comes across her wedding photo where she’s smiling toward something off camera. He thinks about how people can hurt each other and remembers what it used to be like before his dad left his mother for another woman. Jeremiah wishes he had someone to talk to and remembers how earlier in class he caught Ellie staring at him. Jeremiah finds himself thinking about Ellie: “I’m going to kiss you soon,” but right now he feels the emptiness of the house (101). Jeremiah whispers for his mama and daddy, but the house just echoes, and he cries to himself.
Chapter 11 Summary
Ellie finds Jeremiah in the hallway at school, and he says she was in his mind, “just kind of floating through it” (102). They decide to cut class and walk to Central Park. Two white ladies passing by ask Ellie if she’s okay, and Jeremiah knows it’s because he’s with her. Ellie hopes that’s not true, but she knows it is. She wishes she had been brave enough to say something or take his hand in front of them. They finally sit in the park. Ellie talks about Marion and tells Jeremiah about Marion’s history of abandoning the family and how it’s hurt her. Ellie’s revelation reminds Jeremiah of a poem his mother used to read to him, and he recites Audre Lorde’s poem “If You Come Softly.” Reflecting on the poem, Ellie wonders if Jeremiah has always been coming toward her and this moment. They kiss, and Ellie feels everything grow “quiet and still and perfect” (113).
Chapters 7-11 Analysis
Much like in the initial chapters, these next three chapters use Ellie and Jeremiah’s internal monologues to demonstrate how alike and connected they are. This section begins with Ellie constantly thinking of Jeremiah, despite that she’s only seen him once. When he is eventually transferred into her history class, she feels the room change before she sees him. At home, Ellie and Jeremiah spend their free time thinking about each other, wondering what challenges may come from their relationship and wondering what it’d be like to kiss. In Chapter 11, Jeremiah tells Ellie that she’s just been floating through his mind before they decide to walk to the park together. As they finally kiss, Ellie once again feels the world around her change as it becomes perfect and still. In all of these instances, Ellie and Jeremiah do not say much out loud, but their interior lives demonstrate that they are connected through their thoughts and feelings. This use of interiority by the author creates a sense of deep connection and inevitability.
The reference to Audre Lorde is significant to the story in multiple ways. First, the author takes her title from Lorde’s poem. Second, Lorde was a self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Lorde’s identity as both Black and a lesbian means that she faced both racism and homophobia. Her very identity set her up for controversy because of her skin color as well as her love life, similar to the issues that Ellie and Jeremiah face. Third, the end of Lorde’s poem suggests that one of the “lovers” in the poem dies, again foreshadowing Jeremiah’s death later in the novel.
Central Park becomes an important symbol in this section of chapters and the prior chapters. Central Park is where Ellie first remembers experiencing racism in her sister’s reaction to a Black man jogging, and it’s also where Ellie and Jeremiah first experience racism as a couple. Later in the novel, Jeremiah’s father asks him to avoid the area, and Jeremiah dies there because of racist policing. Central Park already had a history of racist policing at the time of Woodson’s writing, as the Central Park Five, young Black and Latino men, were convicted of sexually assaulting and beating a woman in the park 10 years prior to the publication of the novel. In more recent years, these convictions have been overturned due to a confession and irrefutable DNA evidence, though the public already suspected that the young men were convicted based on their skin color alone. It’s possible Woodson is considering convictions like this one in writing her novel.
Related Titles
By Jacqueline Woodson
