What the Fireflies Knew

What the Fireflies Knew is a novel that is replete with references to other texts with girls as protagonists. Kai Harris introduces these works as texts that shape how KB understands her identity as a Black, working-class girl. What the Fireflies Knew is most in conversation with Canadian writer Lucy Montgomery’s 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables. These literary representations of girlhood are important to KB, but Harris intervenes in the conventions of representing girlhood in books like Anne of Green Gables by being attentive to the impact of intersecting oppressions and social identities in her characterization of KB.

Anne of Green Gables is about Anne Shirley, an 11-year-old girl who is an orphan until she is sent to live with Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, aging siblings who asked for a boy to help them with the increasingly burdensome work on their farm. Anne is fascinated with words and the natural world that she discovers on the farm. Although Anne’s spirited nature upsets the sedate life to which Marilla and Matthew are accustomed, Marilla in particular leaves behind her repressive, grim manner and grows to love the girl.

Despite some encounters with girls who look down on her because of her background, Anne develops close friendships that enrich her life. In this book and subsequent volumes in the series, Anne uses her gift with words to secure a scholarship that will help her become a teacher. She has to give up her dreams after Matthew dies, leaving Marilla in such dire financial straits that she may lose the farm. Anne’s can-do spirit bolsters Marilla in her efforts to save the farm.

Early in What the Fireflies Knew, KB identifies Anne of Green Gables as her favorite book—the only one she owns, in fact. Her love for the book is rooted in obvious parallels between her life and Anne’s. Like Anne, she lived a precarious early life; although she had both parents in her life, her father’s substance abuse disorder made him unavailable or disruptive; her mother bears most of the burden of supporting her family financially, so she, too, is not always available to her daughter. Like Anne, KB suddenly finds herself in a household not built for children. While KB is unsure of what to make of her quiet grandfather, she pegs him as a Marilla who “ain’t talk to Anne much at first” (20). Like Anne, KB glories in words that she doesn’t completely understand and in nature, which serves as a balm when life gets to be too much for her.

While KB uses Anne of Green Gables as a text for understanding herself and the adults around her, Harris makes KB attentive to the differences between her situation and Anne’s. Because KB is a Black, working-class girl, KB confronts challenges that Anne never does. KB has her first direct encounter with racism and classism because of her relationship with Bobby and Charlotte, whose mother teaches her children to see KB as less than because she is poor and Black. When Bobby and Charlotte’s mother accuses KB of theft, KB experiences something particular to children who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC): the discovery that racism—sometimes multiplied with class inequality—is a force that has the potential to constrain their choices in life and determine their social identities.

KB looks for other texts that can provide insight into her identity. She reads Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Zora Neale Hurston’s decidedly adult novel. The protagonist in Hurston’s novel is Janie Crawford, who strives for autonomy despite the constraints of race, class, and gender from girlhood to womanhood. KB uses the text as a primer on the archetypes of Black girlhood and womanhood. She identifies her mother as a Janie type and her father as a Tea Cake type because her mother loved KB’s father but was damaged because of his inadequacies. KB also identifies with Janie because she, too, is “tryna find a way for herself” (54).

Near the end of the novel, Nia gifts KB Amazing Grace, a 1991 book by Mary Hoffman in which the title character defies racism and gender bias among her classmates by playing Peter Pan in a class play. Grace is a dreamer who occupies many roles through make-believe. The freedom that Grace experiences is contextualized by her family’s belief in her. By the end of What the Fireflies Knew, KB is a Grace whose self-belief is the bedrock of her sense of self-efficacy and autonomy.