79 pages • 2 hours read
Sharon M. DraperA 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.
At the core of Blended as a coming-of-age story is Izzy’s growing perception of the wide implications of racism in contemporary America. As Izzy mentions often in the opening pages, she is olive-skinned, neither Black nor white, able to pass as either, seeing her life as a kind of fancy cookie, part chocolate and part vanilla. That relatively harmless sense of her blended racial identity has kept Izzy from acknowledging the hard reality of racism.
That awareness begins with the snarky, insensitive comment she overhears in class from a white kid about the harmlessness of lynching and the subsequent discovery of the noose in her friend’s gym locker. Because Izzy has been raised to carefully balance her white and Black identities, the reality of such ugly racism is new to her. She feels suddenly vulnerable, embarrassed to be white, wanting to be Black. She is torn between which race she is even as she comes to understand that her Black identity subjects her to menacing perceptions and threats of white America. Her father stresses that Black people are constantly being evaluated by white people. In the class discussion, Izzy’s teacher points out that the history of racism in America is hardly a finished
By Sharon M. Draper
Copper Sun
Sharon M. Draper
Darkness Before Dawn
Sharon M. Draper
Fire from the Rock
Sharon M. Draper
Forged By Fire
Sharon M. Draper
Just Another Hero
Sharon M. Draper
November Blues
Sharon M. Draper
Out of My Heart
Sharon M. Draper
Out of My Mind
Sharon M. Draper
Romiette and Julio
Sharon M. Draper
Stella by Starlight
Sharon M. Draper
Tears of a Tiger
Sharon M. Draper
The Battle of Jericho
Sharon M. Draper
We Beat the Street: How A Friendship Pact Led to Success
George Jenkins, Rameck Hunt, Sampson Davis, Sharon M. Draper