85 pages • 2 hours read
Lisa Moore RaméeA Good Kind of Trouble
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. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Isabella’s Green Top
The top Isabella reluctantly lends to Shayla symbolizes Shayla’s envy in both its archetypical color and how Shayla uses it. Shayla decides to borrow the top immediately after thinking she wasn’t as “cute as [Isabella]” and knows “[i]t’s her absolute favorite” (101). Instead of owning her own sense of style, she emulates Isabella’s, hoping she can look just as good. Using the top to get Jace’s attention only brings his attention back to Isabella, showing the fallacy in changing oneself to meet another’s perceived preferences.
Until this point, Shayla has had unkind thoughts towards Isabella and sometimes snippy words, and her decision to prioritize gaining Jace as a boyfriend over maintaining a healthy relationship with one of her best friends deepens the splintering of the United Nations. The color of the top, green, is traditionally associated with envy and greed, further characterizing Shayla’s self-centeredness at the beginning of the novel. Her failure to gain Jace’s attention by wearing the top accentuates the thematic idea that conformity does not necessarily lead to belonging. Though she tries to conform to Jace’s standards of beauty, she doesn’t win his favor.
Eyeball Journal
Ms. Jacobs assigns the eyeball journal at the start of the school year. Shayla’s journal becomes a motif embodying the theme that awareness is a necessary step towards enacting change. She writes sparingly in it at first, her entries growing along with her social awareness. The thoughts she journals eventually become actions, culminating in her wearing and later distributing the Black Lives Matter armbands.
Her final decision to leave the entire journal available for Ms. Jacobs to read, despite the entries’ emotional vulnerability, shows Shayla’s newfound self-acceptance. She withdraws from discussing race in English class at first, but after Ms. Jacobs suggests to “watch the news” because “[r]ace factoring into police activity is something [the class] should pay attention to” (23), Shayla diligently follows suit. The eyeball journal sparks the conversation with her family about the need for a less white-centric curriculum when Shayla tells them the assignment was inspired by a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. She defends Emerson’s relevance, but by the end of the novel, Shayla suggests to Ms. Jacobs that instead of To Kill a Mockingbird, the class should read Brown Girl Dreaming, a book by an author of color. As she continues to reflect in her eyeball journal, she gains awareness about the injustice faced by Black people as well as an awareness of herself. The eyeball journal symbolizes that change starts with awareness and can lead to personal growth.
Expressive Accessories: Mr. Powell’s Scarf, Black Lives Matter Armbands
Ramée repeatedly brings attention to accessories that express something about the individual wearing them. Mr. Powell’s scarf appears whenever differences are discussed, and the Black Lives Matter armband Hana gives Shayla embodies her embracing her personal values. This motif of accessories highlights the theme of how individual expression can contribute towards larger change, just as Mr. Powell’s scarves show students that they can be different, too, and how Shayla wearing an armband transforms into a school-wide Black Lives Matter rally.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The novel’s setting is Emerson Junior High, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, a writer and lecturer from the 1800s, founded the Transcendentalist movement, a movement of people who believed that
God could best be found by looking inward into one’s self […] and from such an enlightened self-awareness would in turn come freedom of action and the ability to change one’s world according to the dictates of one’s ideals and conscience (“Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica).
Emerson felt that a major cornerstone of education was action and that without action, thought would not reach its full potential. Shayla’s narrative arc follows Emerson’s perspective as she finds self-awareness of her ideals of justice, leading to her wearing and distributing the armbands and changing her school into a protest location.
Emerson also expressed that “‘the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil.’ It is not for the teacher to choose what the pupil will know and do, but for the pupil to discover ‘his own secret’” (Goodman, Russell. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.” 2020. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Though others try to guide her towards taking action regarding the police shooting trial, Shayla doesn’t shift her focus away from Jace until she sees firsthand the results of the trial and how school authorities mistreat Bernard, a Black student. Principal Trask defies the educational philosophy of her school’s namesake when she censors her students’ expression. Momma understands that Emerson advocated for self-expression and discovery of personal values, so when Trask bans the armbands, Momma calls her out for disregarding his view on education.
Ms. Jacobs, however, shares quotes by Emerson with her English class and encourages her students to research him as a historical figure. Coach West discusses the quote inscribed on Emerson’s bust in front of the school. Both educators encourage Shayla to embrace her individuality and to take action for change. The motif of Ralph Waldo Emerson highlights the theme of change being dependent on individual actions.
