59 pages • 1 hour read
Samira AhmedLove, Hate and Other Filters
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2018A 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.
Chapter 22-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary
The next day, Maya informs her parents that she plans to go to New York in August. She is calm but also terrified. Asif and Sofia struggle to understand why their daughter dictates what she plans to do, and they are angry. Maya says that she will be 18 and legally allowed to live her own life. Asif wonders how she will pay for everything. Hina says she plans to help Maya financially. Sofia is furious; Asif says what they are experiencing is punishment for raising Maya with American values. Maya points out that her parents worked hard to build their dental practice, and she wants to work hard to make movies. Asif gives Maya a choice: She can choose New York or her parents. Maya chooses New York. Asif tells her that as soon as she is 18, she must leave their house. He gets up and leaves. Sofia says, “You have broken your parents’ hearts” (250). Hina tells Maya that she made the right decision and that she is brave. She hopes that Maya’s parents will come to understand someday.
In Dearborn, Michigan, a senator gives Kamal Aziz’s eulogy.
Chapter 23 Summary
Maya is at Violet’s house. She tells Violet what happened with her parents, revealing that she was disowned. Violet says Maya can stay at her house for a little while and also says slyly that Phil is on his way. Violet suddenly decides that she needs to do homework. Phil arrives, and he and Maya share a kiss. Then Phil talks about prom. He wants to take Maya but he promised Lisa that he would not bring anyone. Maya says she is not a very traditional person. He says he likes that and asks, “So will you go to a nontraditional prom with me?” (258). Maya says yes but wonders what a nontraditional prom is. Phil says he is creating one.
Ethan Branson’s classmate gives an interview. She had one literature class with Ethan; he did not say much. But when they read a poem by Walt Whitman about “being helpless,” Ethan read the poem out loud and spoke in class (259). Everyone was surprised. She saw him tear out the page with the poem on it.
Chapter 24 Summary
On prom night, Maya helps Violet get ready. Violet hands Maya a small backpack to take with her to the nontraditional prom. Maya is wearing a short dress with a peacock print. Phil arrives in a black suit with no tie. He hands Maya some purple calla lilies. He escorts her to the car and slips a blindfold over her eyes; he wants the location to be a surprise. When they arrive, he carries her to their final destination. He takes off the blindfold, and they are in the cottage, which is full of lit candles and small white lights. A table is set for two, and the windows have curtains. “No one’s ever done anything like this for me before,” Maya says (264). They eat supper together at the table. Phil changes the music and asks Maya to dance. She gets up and dances with him, thinking, “A part of me wishes I could capture this moment on film, a memory of something good and true in my life” (265).
After supper and dancing, Phil and Maya change clothes in the park’s public restroom. Maya finds a condom in the backpack from Violet, but she shakes her head. They go to the pond, where the trees are decorated with paper lanterns. Phil builds a fire, and he and Maya roast marshmallows and make s’mores. They sit close to each other and enjoy the dusk.
The Walt Whitman poem that Ethan Branson tore from the book is “O Me! O Life!” from Leaves of Grass.
Epilogue Summary
Just before Thanksgiving break, an Indian student at NYU asks Maya to attend a film screening that evening. She agrees. He gives her a peck on the cheek, which brings back memories of her final kiss with Phil before they mutually parted ways that summer. Hina is hosting Thanksgiving at her house, and Maya’s parents have agreed to come. Sofia texts Maya and asks if she should bring Maya’s favorite winter hat. The pink hat is not really Maya’s favorite but she texts: YES! PLEASE! She knows it will make her mother happy. She realizes that her parents didn’t do anything wrong; they were just being her parents: “And the world between us cracked because of the difference in how we understand that fundamental bond” (273).
Maya takes a walk along the Hudson River and sees the Statue of Liberty in the distance. Her parents also saw this statue when they arrived from India. Maya imagines herself in a film, looking up and smiling as the frame fades.
Chapter 22-Epilogue Analysis
When Maya’s parents disown her, she does not anticipate this course of action: “I can’t move. I sit at the table, stunned” (250). Even though Maya has only few more weeks to live in her parents’ house until she turns 18, this is the last scene in which Maya and her parents talk to each other face-to-face. They do not make direct appearances again in the book. When Maya finally dictates her own future, her childhood with Asif and Sofia ends, and her parents become background characters in her life and in the novel.
As Maya asserts her independence and her agency, the novel fulfills its role as a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age story. As Maya begins “directing” her own life, her confidence grows, and she becomes an active agent of change. The story shifts to focus purely on Maya and her aspirations, not her relationship with her parents or even with Phil. Though she enjoys kissing Phil and savors their nontraditional prom at the cottage, she recognizes that their romance is “simply a short-subject documentary” (267), and they part ways at the end of the summer. Though they helped each other identify their goals, they must pursue those dreams separately, without limiting the other.
