Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Fiction | Anthology/Varied Collection | YA | Published in 2019

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

“Out of the Silence” by Kekla MagoonChapter Summaries & Analyses

“Out of the Silence” Summary

The narrator of the story, Cassie, is writing to Tessa, who died in a car crash recently. Cassie notes how little they knew each other, as their entire relationship was six months in gym together bonding over the fact that neither was interested in participating.

Although Cassie does not attend Tessa’s funeral, given how little they knew each other, she does think about what it would be like to talk to Tessa’s mother there. She imagines telling her that her daughter “shook [her] life to its foundation” (99).

Cassie remembers their few conversations in gym class, during one of which Tessa tells Cassie that she assumed she was a lesbian, especially based on the way she looks at Angela in gym class. Cassie is shocked by the cavalier way that Tessa discusses her possible queer identity, thinking of how much it would mean to her life if she was, in fact, a lesbian. She becomes worried that other people think of her as a lesbian, but Tessa simply shrugs.

Cassie reveals that it has been six months since Tessa died, and all she has done is think about her and her features—eyes, nails, and her “red, red lips” that were “silenced and a part of [Cassie] was entirely relieved” (105).

“Out of the Silence” Analysis

“Out of the Silence” is an epistolary short story that uses the second person point of view from Cassie’s perspective to explore the complexities of sexuality for teenagers. The story uses repetition to create a poetic tone, beginning different sections of the text with the same lines, such as “You died on a Friday” (96-97) and “I didn’t go to your funeral” (98-99). Additionally, the use of metaphors as Cassie writes to Tessa conveys her love and affection for Tessa: She writes, “I was the quiet girl who never made waves. You were the actual ocean” (101) and “Your dark hair flew back, revealing the barely checked wildness underneath your skin, a reined creature yearning to run free” (101). These metaphors—where Cassie compares Tessa to an ocean and a creature desiring to be free—reveal Cassie’s feelings for Tessa and the importance Tessa held in her life.

The poetic qualities of Cassie’s letter suggest that the letter is one of grief and sorrow over Tessa’s death. However, the story subverts this expectation in the final line of the text, where Cassie reveals that “a part of [her] was entirely relieved” by Tessa’s death (105). Instead of being the love letter that the metaphorical and poetic language throughout the text suggests, with this last revelation, the story instead becomes a confession of Cassie’s partial relief at Tessa’s death. On the one hand, Cassie deeply loves Tessa, as is clear by her language and the letter she writes; on the other, she is also unprepared to face her own sexuality and the impact that that would have on her life and her relationships. Even as she writes her letter, her internal struggle of Living Between Two Worlds is clear: “Out late, speeding, maybe with the wind in your luscious black hair. I didn’t mean to say luscious. Your hair was simply black. Jet black. Ebony” (104). Even in Tessa’s death and her letter of remembrance to her, Cassie still struggles with the two parts of herself: the part that sees Tessa’s hair as “luscious” and the part that sees it simply as “black,” a simple description rather than a romantic one.