55 pages • 1 hour read
Ibi ZoboiMy Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A 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 18-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 18 Summary
There are nine planets, and Pluto is the farthest away from the sun and represents how Bianca is staying far away from Ebony-Grace and giving her the cold shoulder. Mercury is the closest to the sun, so Monique is Monique Mercury—she’s mean. Yet at the park, Monique insists that Ebony-Grace help turn the rope (a telephone wire) for double-Dutch, and Bianca helps Ebony-Grace by telling her it’s just like handling a screwdriver.
Ebony-Grace initially does a good job, but when Bianca jumps in, she goes into her space world and starts turning the rope too fast, causing Bianca to fall and hit her head hard on the ground. The girls berate Ebony-Grace for not listening to them and turning slower.
Chapter 19 Summary
The Nine Flavas Crew eat icees, and Monique explains why she had Ebony-Grace help turn the rope: They need two people jumping, six people dancing outside, and two people on the rope. Rum Raisin Rhonda says they should find a different person—Ebony-Grace wants to kill them. Ebony-Grace apologizes to Bianca, but Bianca calls Ebony-Grace “jealous” and disses her “stupid games.”
Outside Dapper Dan’s, Ebony-Grace notices a group of men wearing shiny clothes that make them look like a space crew. Ebony-Grace wonders if Dapper Dan makes spacesuits—he doesn’t: He makes “fly” suits—Gucci suits, Fendi suits, and so on.
Outside Dapper Dan’s shop is a poster promoting a battle between the New York City Breakerz and Apollo Theater All-Stars. There’ll also be a contest for breakdancing and double-Dutch—the winners get a cash prize. Monique wants Dapper Dan to make her crew outfits for the contest, but they can’t pay him until after they win and get the money. Monique says Bianca will beat the boys, and Rhonda teases Bianca about liking PJ. Ebony-Grace is confused.
Chapter 20 Summary
Ebony-Grace makes a collect call to Marshall Space Flight Center and asks to speak to her grandpa. After several people transfer her, a woman stays on the phone and asks Ebony-Grace if she’s an attorney or detective. Ebony-Grace identifies herself as the granddaughter, and the woman tells her that Granddaddy no longer works at the center.
The morning before Ebony-Grace left for Harlem, she went through Granddaddy’s scrapbooks, saw pictures of his first day at the center, and read an article from March 1964 about Black scientists integrating the center. She also went through Nana’s things, which still had her scent.
Chapter 21 Summary
An alarm goes off: It’s not an attack on Uhura but Diane pressing the outside buzzer early in the morning. Daddy tells Ebony-Grace to get up, and Ebony-Grace says her stomach hurts. Daddy sends Diane away, but he still pays her—Diane reminds Daddy that her aunt still paid him after he failed to fix the muffler in her car.
After Daddy leaves, Ebony-Grace puts on her Star Wars t-shirt and acid-washed jeans before going into Cadet E-Grace Starfleet mode until Uncle Rich leaves his room with a woman, Carol, holding silver high heels. Uncle Rich tells Ebony-Grace to ignore what she sees, and they leave, so Ebony-Grace returns to battling Sonic King and rescuing Captain Fleet. She slides down the stairs, pretending Sonic Boom has her soul and she’s unconscious.
Uncle Rich returns with a different “lady friend” in short shorts, a tight shirt, and gold trapezoid earrings. Ebony-Grace explains her space mission, and Uncle Rich laughs. The woman says Funkazoids sound like the name of a dance crew or rap group, and Ebony-Grace calls the woman “Carol,” and the woman wonders who’s Carol.
Uncle Rich sends the woman to his room and gives Ebony-Grace $1 to keep quiet. Granddaddy gives her $20 to stay silent. The woman comes down the stairs and calls Uncle Rich “Daddy,” which confuses Ebony-Grace. She says bye to “Carol,” and then watches the Nina Flavas Crew jump rope before she runs into the cord to save Bianca. The cord snares Ebony-Grace, and she falls hard on her butt.
Chapter 22 Summary
Bianca buys icees from the bodega to put on Ebony-Grace’s aching body. Ebony-Grace says she was trying to save Bianca, but Bianca doesn’t need saving. She wonders why Ebony-Grace doesn’t grow up. Bianca and the Nine Flavas Crew “play,” but it’s different—they’re “actually doing something.”
Daddy comes home with pizza and Robitussin, so he tells Bianca to stick around. Bianca loves pizza, but her grandma thinks it’s a waste of money to buy other people’s food. Señora Luz thinks her arroz con habichuelas (rice and beans) is fine. Momma also doesn’t like buying food from other people. Ebony-Grace says other people’s food might contain mind-controlling ingredients that’ll make you eat your friends and family.
Daddy leaves to watch TV, and Ebony-Grace taunts Bianca for eating quickly and refers to arroz con habichuelas as “roots and parachutes.” She calls Bianca a “street urchin,” and Bianca insults her “baby games.” Ebony-Grace calls Bianca “rude” and grabs the pizza from her mouth and hands. The girls fight, Daddy intervenes, and Ebony-Grace runs to her room (her “not-room”).
Chapter 23 Summary
Daddy scolds Ebony-Grace for acting “spoiled” and expressing “crazy ideas” about eating her friends and family. Ebony-Grace replies that Uncle Rich had two “lady friends” over, but Daddy calls his daughter a “tattletale” and tells her to stay out of “grown folk’s business”—her grandpa probably had a lot of “lady friends” at his house. Ebony-Grace says what her grandpa does is “grown-folk’s business,” and she stays out of it. Daddy laughs.
Daddy tells Ebony-Grace that she has to stop with the space games and learn how to get along with others. Ebony-Grace cries: She isn’t trying to be disrespectful—she wants to be “regular.” Daddy corrects her: She wants to be “outta sight” and unique but not “outta space” different.
Ebony-Grace wants to go home, but she can’t—Momma is too busy with Granddaddy. Besides, Ebony-Grace is home. Harlem explodes with culture. In New York City, she can experience the world. Daddy thinks they should “start over” and promises to take Ebony-Grace and Bianca to a movie on July 4.
Chapter 24 Summary
July 4 arrives, and on the way to the train, Ebony-Grace notices the dancing children and the trash on the streets. She also notes how every other man in the neighborhood knows her dad, calling him “Julius,” “Jules,” or “DJ Jule Thief.” Unhoused people try to sell Daddy miscellaneous items, like a doorknob or a carton of milk, and Daddy tells the person with milk to drop by his shop tomorrow.
Ebony-Grace hears the aboveground train and calls it the sonic boom, but they’re going into the underground train station. Daddy tells them to crawl under the turnstile. It smells wretched, and the train tunnels remind Ebony-Grace of an abyss—it could be home to the bellicose aliens from Star Trek, the Klingons.
Chapter 25 Summary
The train arrives, and the girls cover their ears. Inside, Ebony-Grace keeps her ears covered, but Bianca pulls them away. She asks Ebony-Grace why she’s acting so mean. Ebony-Grace asks Bianca a similar question. Ebony-Grace notices someone wrote “R.I.P. Michael Stewart” on a passing train. The phrase is also on a seat inside the train. One year earlier, in 1983, New York City police officers caught the 25-year-old Black man allegedly tagging a subway car and beat him to death. The girls discuss the kind of graffiti they’d make, and Bianca calls Ebony-Grace’s outer space design “funky fresh.”
The girls express their goals. Bianca wants to be a famous rapper and breakdancer. Ebony-Grace wants to be the first kid in outer space. The train stops at Times Square, and, used to the noise, Ebony-Grace doesn’t cover her ears.
Chapters 18-25 Analysis
The motif of gender and sexuality occurs throughout the story, like when Ebony-Grace notices the girls and women in tight shirts and shorts that look like underwear. In this section, the motif becomes pronounced. Ebony-Grace meets one of Uncle Rich’s “lady friends,” and he tells her, “[S]he was a figment of your imagination location” (152). Uncle Rich links the motif to Imagination Versus Reality, and Ebony-Grace can’t, or doesn’t want to, imagine what Uncle Rich does with these women. When he brings home another woman, the woman tells Uncle Rich, “Don’t make me wait too long, Daddy.” Confused, Ebony-Grace mutters, “Daddy?” (157). As Ebony-Grace is unsure about these women, so is the reader. Zoboi uses allusion—she leaves hints through their style and diction—to tell the reader they’re sex workers. The presence of sex workers in a story for young people is relatively fraught. Yet they’re a part of Ebony-Grace’s reality, so the reader must confront them.
As with the “ice cream sandwich” slur, Zoboi uses humor to make the “lady friend” situation lighthearted. After Uncle Rich offers to give Ebony-Grace $1 in “hush money,” Ebony-Grace snaps, “A dollar’s all you got, Uncle Rich? My granddaddy gives me a whole twenty” (157). The sharp difference in sums is funny. The mention of Granddaddy sheds light on his troubles—they’re likely related to women and sex.
Separate from sexuality, the story features a mostly empowering picture of girls. The girls are willful and assertive. They have defined personalities, and they don’t lack confidence. When they see the Apollo Theater contest, Monique tells Bianca, “You’re better than Calvin even with that knot behind your head. And probably than PJ, too!” (135). The girls upend gender inequality: They don’t think boys are better than them. As they’re strong and free, they meet the general criteria for feminism.
The girls’ firm beliefs cause tension, with the Nine Flavas standing by their culture of double-Dutch, breaking, and rapping, while Ebony-Grace refuses to tone down the science-fiction culture she cultivates in her imagination, identity, and self-expression. The Nine Flavas are arguably more accepting, and they advance the theme of Growth and Acceptance when they invite Ebony-Grace to hold the rope (telephone cord), even there their acceptance is born from need, not true connection. Ebony conveys her rejection by moving the rope too fast, causing Bianca to fall. The Nine Flavas might be ready to accept Ebony-Grace, but she’s not ready to merge into their world.
After Ebony-Grace and Bianca fight over the pizza, Ebony-Grace hints that she wants to grow and belong to the culture around her. Crying, she tells Daddy, “I’m just trying to be […] regular and normal” (167). Daddy replies, “You don’t wanna be regular. You wanna be dynamite. You wanna be outta sight. Just…not outta space” (167). He wants his daughter to keep her unique identity and powerful self-expression, but he doesn’t want to stay so detached from reality.
In this section, Ebony-Grace’s continual return to the world of science fiction and outer space is apparent as a coping mechanism used to understand her life and the world. Her imaginings are a framework for categorizing and understanding relationships (the Nine Flava are likened to planets based on their attributes) and for navigating new experiences (double-Dutch represents a transportation device and later a space-time conundrum). When she enters a subway station, she likens it to an abyss and imagines it could be hiding an enemy Klingon ship. Her honesty with her father about her desire to be “regular and normal” (167) shows a young person struggling with Growth and Acceptance. Unfortunately, her Self Exploration and Identity Creation—grounded as it is in an otherworldly view—further alienates her from her peers and exasperates the adults.
To create the higgledy-piggledy atmosphere of riding the New York City subway, Zoboi uses diction, and the reader can hear the “rolling, screeching sound” of the train. She also uses imagery, showing the reader how Bianca and Ebony-Grace “crawl under the spinning metal bars” to avoid paying the fare (174). In the subway, Ebony-Grace’s humor shines, quipping, “This is another planet” (175). After the reader experiences the subway ride with Zoboi, they might feel similarly.
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