65 pages • 2 hours read
Lynn JosephThe Color of My Words
Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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BetaChapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Wash Day”
In the opening chapters of the novel, Ana Rosa describes simple activities and family relationships. “Wash Day” describes Ana Rosa and Mami doing the laundry at the river. This is a special time for Ana Rosa where she can be open with her mother about her poetry writing. After a tense moment where Mami slaps Ana Rosa for criticizing her father, Ana Rosa tells Mami that she wants to be a writer. Mami cautions Ana Rosa to be more patient, suggesting that she “flow softly around the rocks” (7) until she is older. Even though Ana Rosa knows that she should be patient, she thinks to herself, “there always has to be a first person to do something” (9).
Chapter 2 Summary: “Words”
Ana Rosa reflects on her growing relationship with words, as she dreams of “a notepad of [her] very own” (11). Since she doesn’t yet have something to write in, she steals paper from wherever she can. Her older brother, Guario, has a tempting notebook that is special for his job as a waiter. One night, when Guario is out dancing, Ana Rosa writes on every page in the notebook.
After hiding the notebook so that no one knows what she has done, Ana Rosa wakes up the next morning to a great commotion: Guario, unable to find the notebook, says he’ll be fired. As everyone in her family frantically searches for the notebook, Ana Rosa feels a growing guilt. Mami seems to know what Ana Rosa has done, but instead of yelling at her or accusing her, Mami cooks a huge lunch for the family.
As everyone relaxes after eating, each person pulls out a few pesos to give to Guario to buy a new notebook. Before Guario leaves for work, Ana Rosa runs after him, apologizing and admitting to her mistake. He gently tells her that he knows “what it feels like… to want something so bad” (22), and when Ana Rosa asks what he wants, Guario replies, “a future” (22).
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Gri Gri Tree”
When she climbs up the gri gri tree, Ana Rosa is “hidden from the world / and all who seek me” (26). This is her special place to observe the world around her and think about her life. On one particular day she sees “a giant monster” (28) in the sea. The shock makes her almost fall out of the tree, and she climbs down to warn her family.
After telling the story about the monster to everyone who will listen, and receiving some laughter, the townspeople begin to buy into Ana Rosa’s tale of the sea monster. Since it’s almost tourist high season, the villagers begin discussing advertising the sea monster. Later, the town learns that a humpback whale wandered close to their shore; Ana Rosa doesn’t mind, since the whale helped her become recognized as a storyteller.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Words feature heavily as a symbol and plot point in the opening chapter of the novel. Ana Rosa views words as a significant part of her life: They are how she processes the world around her, how she expresses her thoughts, and the content of all of her inner thinking and private emotions. The poetry at the start of each chapter highlights how important words are to Ana Rosa; through this device, Joseph both characterizes Ana Rosa as a poet and centers creative practice as the heart of the novel’s storyline. In connection with the importance of words is the way that dialogue features in the opening chapters. Ana Rosa listens and interacts with her family members and pays close attention to what these people say: whether this is a critique from Mami or her guilty interaction with Guario. These early chapters also hint at conflicts to come, since all of Ana Rosa’s most complicated feelings have to do either with the words she keeps secret or interactions where she speaks with other characters.
Since The Color of My Words is written through the first-person perspective of a young adolescent, the reliability of the narrator is a key aspect of the way the novel unfolds. It seems that Ana Rosa is meant to be an honest storyteller. She frequently attempts to tell what happened as clearly as possible. Despite this, as a 12 year old, she also struggles to interpret the world around her. Joseph highlights Ana Rosa’s naivete through the story of the “monster” that she sees in the ocean. Though it later turns out to be a whale, this scene illuminates Ana Rosa’s tendency towards the imaginative, which is important in later interactions in the novel. If The Color of My Words were written in a more detached third person, Ana Rosa might appear more childish; it’s through the first person that readers are truly invited into Ana Rosa’s perspective and can interpret her excited observations as fact rather than fiction.
