Notebook prompt: Kambili's Dream

After spending the day with Aunty Ifeoma, Papa-Nnukwu, and her cousins, Kambili has a dream: “I dreamed that I was laughing, but it did not sound like my laughter, although I was not sure what my laughter sounded like. It was cackling and throaty and enthusiastic, like Aunty Ifeoma’s” (88). 

How do you interpret this dream? How does it reflect Kambili’s recent experiences? What does laughter represent, and why is it important?

Take 5 minutes now to contemplate this passage in your Notebook.

Notebook Prompt: First Impressions of Kambili

Part 1 ("Breaking Gods: Palm Sunday") of Purple Hibiscus introduces us to the fraught family dynamics that the narrator is a part of: she describes this scene at home on Palm Sunday as the moment when "everything" has come "tumbling down" in her family, when "things started to fall apart." As we start to unpack this densely layered opening scene, take a few minutes to record your initial impressions of Kambili (who has not yet shared her name with us) as both a character and a narrator in this opening section. How would you describe her narrative voice? How does this voice seem to reflect her character, her role within this family?

Take 5 minutes in your Notebook to record your initial observations and impressions of Kambili as a character and as the narrator of this story.

Allusions in Adichie

The first line of Kambili's narrative ("Things started to fall apart at home when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion . . .") alludes to two well-known literary works: the novel Things Fall Apart (1958) by the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, and the poem "The Second Coming" (1919) by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, to which Achebe alludes in his title. Things Fall Apart is the most well-known of Achebe's works, and it depicts a traditional Igbo man struggling to come to grips with the encroachment of British colonialism in his community. Achebe essentially initiated modern Nigerian fiction in English, and Adichie cites him as a profound influence on her own writing. As we'll see, Purple Hibiscus addresses the intersection of British-colonial and traditional Igbo culture in the 1980s from a more modern, domestic perspective than in Achebe's novel (reflected in her specification of things falling apart at home).

Notebook Prompt: A Coming-of-Age Novel?

If I Ever Get Out of Here might be categorized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel (literally: "novel of education or growth"). These narratives often depict a young protagonist and their experiences in schools and with "education" more generally, as they struggle to define themselves and find their place in the world, and as we've discussed, school and the education system have been a rather fraught issue for Lewis and for the history of Native American people. As the novel concludes, what significant growth or development do you see in Lewis's character? Is he different in significant ways by the end of this nearly two-year story? Do you see evidence of Lewis "coming of age" over the course of this narrative? How can a reader measure something so abstract? What "threads" do you see in the novel that reflect or trace this development?

Take 5 minutes in your Notebook to contemplate any coming-of-age threads you see in this novel.