Make Lemonade

Accompanying the symbol of Jeremy’s lemon plant is the novel’s titular idea of “making lemonade”—of taking life’s challenges and turning them into something beneficial.

Jolly encounters the idea of making lemonade from life’s lemons in her Moms Up Program, and the lesson makes such a strong impression on her that she shares it with LaVaughn. Jolly recounts the story her teacher told her of an old blind woman who tried to buy an orange for her starving children, but a group of boys stole her orange and gave her a lemon instead—a switch she wasn’t aware of until she’d returned home. Jolly identifies with this woman, as she’s also been given lemons in her life, and she’s always thought, “‘I must’ve deserved it/if I was so stupid not to know’” (172). However, now that Jolly is receiving educational and emotional support through the Moms Up Program, she places enough value in herself to realize she’s not stupid, and she deserves more than lemons in her life.

Because of Jolly’s personal growth, the end of her teacher’s story makes the biggest impression on her: “‘the point’” of the story, she says, is that the woman “‘makes lemonade’” to “‘feed [….] her starving little ones’” (173). This solution excites Jolly because she is now open to the possibility of “making lemonade” in her own life. By returning to school, learning skills that will lead to a better job, and accepting the help she needs to better her own and her children’s lives, Jolly is making lemonade out of the difficult life she’s been given. Through this metaphor, Wolff demonstrates that no matter how desperate a situation may seem, there is always a way to improve it, to make something worthwhile. For LaVaughn and Jolly, two teens growing up in an impoverished community with a lack of resources and opportunities, this message of hope and resilience is an invaluable one.

For LaVaughn, college is not just a place she hopes to go to or an institution she plans to attend, but a huge, almost mythical place that fills both her house and her thoughts. LaVaughn states that the word “COLLEGE” is a presence in her home, “and you have to walk around it in the rooms/like furniture” (9). LaVaughn creates an idealized image of college in her mind, a place that’s “all clean with grass planted/and they have lion statues and flowers growing” (9), and she returns to this image as a source of comfort and motivation throughout the novel. For LaVaughn, college represents an escape from her depressed urban environment and hope for a better future, as college will lead to a good job that she pictures in equally-idealized terms: “I’ll have my own filing cabinet,” she says, “and also a desk with a calendar on it […] and everybody will know/ ‘Oh, that’s LaVaughn’s department’” (23).

The most important aspect of LaVaughn’s fantasy, however, is not the specifics of college life or her job, but rather the belief that if she makes it to college, she will be free from the “despair/like I saw in these surroundings here” (65). Because all of LaVaughn’s hopes for the future are tied up in the idea of college, it becomes a symbol of her ideal future. 

While LaVaughn is a good student, a few teachers tell her that her “‘grammar frankly stinks’” (118). Because the novel is written in LaVaughn’s voice, her incorrect and unusual grammatical choices form an integral part of the reading experience, both reflecting her inner-city upbringing and adding resonance to her words. LaVaughn’s unique word choices often lend a kind of poignancy to her descriptions. She uses verbs—“‘You need yourself a job where you can dignify’” (109), she tells Jolly—and nouns—her mother is “in her outrage” (27)—in unusual ways.

The idea of grammar also connects with the novel’s emphasis on education, as LaVaughn’s mother tells her she must speak correctly in order to be respected as an educated adult. She warns, “‘You say AIN’T on the job […] your boss thinks he’s got stupid people working there’” (145). By the end of the novel, LaVaughn is trying to improve her grammar, just as she tries to excel in all aspects of her education.