Count Me In

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-14

Chapters 15-24

Chapters 25-31

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Self-Advocacy and Resilience

Content Warning: This section contains references to and descriptions of racism and anti-immigrant violence.

The attack that Karina, Chris, and Karina’s grandfather Shiv experience leads the primary characters to see the importance of self-advocacy as a survival tool. In Chapters 9 and 10, a hateful stranger verbally and physically assaults them because of Karina’s and Shiv’s South Asian identity. Karina has heard about “the rising number of hate crimes against South Asians” (134), but it is different when this kind of violence happens to her and her family. Before the attack, Chris did not understand that his friends could face such unjust treatment in a town that he believed was safe, loving, and peaceful.

After the incident, the tween characters learn about resilience, guided by Shiv, who describes the world as “a constant struggle between love and hate” (149), in which Karina and Chris “can’t stop fighting for good” (150). Despite sustaining physical injuries, Karina’s grandfather encourages Karina and Chris not to back down to hateful, aggressive, and prejudiced people: He tells Karina in Chapter 11 that the man who attacked them “will not win. He will not defeat us” (65). After all Shiv has experienced throughout his life, he refuses “to let that hater take [him and his family] down” (65). Karina realizes that if “[Papa] is going to fight,” so is she (65).

In the wake of the attack, Karina and Chris devote themselves to one another and to their community. Shiv’s refusal to stay silent in private inspires Karina and Chris to speak up more publicly. They do not shy away from difficult conversations about hate crimes, prejudice, and injustice after what they experienced because such dialogues help them to stand up for themselves and prove that hatred has no place in their community. Karina advocates for herself by taking pictures, posting about her experience online, sharing her story on television, and creating a collage of photographs to communicate messages of strength and peace. Chris in turn advocates for his friend by commenting on Karina’s posts, encouraging her, and standing up for her when others denigrate her story. Their efforts prove successful—by the end of the novel, the hatred they’ve faced dwindles in comparison to the love and determination they’ve promoted. Count Me In thus argues that even young social activists can fight injustice with the power of their raised voices.

Power of Friendship and Community

Karina and Chris’s relationships with each other, their peers, and neighbors illustrate the transformative and redemptive impact of interpersonal bonds. At the start of the novel, Karina and Chris feel as if they live on different planets. They not only believe that they have nothing in common but also worry that the bullying incident from sixth grade will forever keep them from understanding one another. However, once Karina notices Chris trying to be nicer to her at school, she remembers what her grandfather told her about letting “bygones be bygones” (26) and decides to forgive Chris for his past unkindness. Her graciousness creates room for Chris to make amends. Their growing friendship builds on their shared appreciation of Karina’s grandfather and their willingness to learn about each other’s hobbies: basketball and photography. By the time of the attack in Chapters 9 and 10, Karina and Chris have already developed a connection that now allows them to rely on one another for support, encouragement, and love as they try to heal from the violent incident they experienced together.

Karina and Chris’s relationship also promotes community feelings in their neighborhood, which they want to turn into a place of safety and welcome. When friends and well-wishers create a memorial commemorating the place where Karina’s grandfather was assaulted, the gesture represents an awakening of tolerance and togetherness in their corner of Houston. The memorial “makes [Chris] feel so much better,” because it shows that “everyone in school knows what happened” (111) and that they have Karina’s back. The memorial also shows Karina and Shiv that they “have good friends” who will remind them “over and over again that [they] do belong” (162). Visually, too, the memorial implies an expanding sense of connection and relation: The deposited mementos consist of a growing “number of green heart leaves […] on the tree” (163)—a metaphor that shows that participants feel rooted to the place where the Chopras live and consider everyone from the neighborhood part of the same living ecosystem. Karina and Chris have let the neighborhood know what they’ve suffered and the neighborhood has in turn used the memorial as a way to show that they hear, see, and validate their experiences.

Karina finds an even more broad scope of relationships through her social media posts. After she documents the attack with photographs, captions, and hashtags, many people online not only post messages of support but also contribute their own images using the same tags. This way of literally linking expression demonstrates that even complete strangers can band together into a positive and productive community. As a result, Karina and Chris realize that with the help of others, they can create the world they want to live in and can withstand life’s injustices. The novel’s closing scenes at the memorial and in Karina’s backyard underscore these ideas and reiterate the ways in which love trumps hatred.

Tolerance and Acceptance

Karina and Chris’s experiences throughout the novel gradually help them to become more open-minded and to accept who they are, an important developmental phase of their young adult lives. The challenges they face throughout the novel ask them to claim their identities and understand others without fear or judgment.

At the start of the novel, although Karina loves her family, she must come to terms with the fact that she has internalized the marginalizing bullying she faced at the hands of her classmates. Because they made fun of the Indian food she brought in from home and her appearance, Karina is worried that when her beloved grandfather begins to volunteer as a tutor at her school, the same bullies will mock his accent and behavior. The teasing has made Karina worry that she is too different from her peers to make true friends, leading her to feel unsafe in social settings. Nevertheless, she wants to forgive her peers for being mean to her, characterizing her as someone who can see the best in others, even when they do not accept her.

Chris, meanwhile, is struggling to make passing grades, which he needs to stay on the basketball team and to please his parents. His difficulties with math make Chris see himself as less capable than his peers. His older brother has also moved out, leaving Chris to navigate his life without a trusted confidant for the first time. Finally, Chris is worried that he is not living up to his ideals about how to be a good person: He feels guilty about having laughed alongside his friends at Karina and is too embarrassed to know how to apologize or make up for it. While Chris knows “what is right and wrong,” he realizes that he “need[s] a new game plan” (11) to become a person who does good even when it’s hard.

For Karina, self-acceptance means using her voice to talk about her family’s immigrant experiences and Indian identity without shame. In the wake of the racist attack that targeted her, her grandfather, and Chris, Karina refuses to internalize and hide what happened to her—the way she did with the bullying at school. Instead, she uses photography and her social media presence to communicate her experiences and unapologetically reach out for support to her friends, family, and community. The decision brings self-discovery and self-acceptance for Karina, not only about her heritage but also about her preferred means of communication: She has “always been more comfortable saying things with [her] photographs” (74) rather than having “to find words” (74). Photography and social media help her to claim who she is.

Karina’s bold refusal to silence herself in response to the attack or the negative comments she gets online in turn inspires Chris to stand up to bullies and rediscover who he is: a kind, empathetic individual who wants to live with love and support his friend. In these ways, both Karina and Chris grow up over the course of the novel. Their coming-of-age experiences do at times make them feel helpless, but ultimately prove that being true to themselves and each other is the most honest and powerful statement of who they are and what they believe.