44 pages • 1 hour read
Kai HarrisWhat the Fireflies Knew
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “June 1995”
Prologue Summary: “January 1995”
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, death as a result of substance abuse, domestic abuse, and sexual assault.
Kenyatta, also known as “KB,” is 10 when she discovers her father’s body in her family home in Detroit. Kenyatta initially keeps calm and quietly moves through the house, just as her mother, Jacquee, taught her. She becomes emotional when her mother loses her cool; the depth of her mother’s emotions surprises her. She overhears the first responders calling her father a disrespectful name for people with substance abuse disorders. She stands by as police officers ransack her house looking for drugs.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
In the aftermath of the father’s death, Jacquee and her two daughters lose their home and move into a hotel. In June, Jacquee drives KB and Nia, Kenyatta’s older sister, to their grandfather’s house in Lansing, Michigan. Nia is sullen during the drive. Although the sisters used to be close, Nia is silent, cruel, or combative with Jacquee. KB reads Anne of Green Gables, her favorite book. She identifies with Anne because of their difficult circumstances. She can’t understand all the words, and Anne’s diction is much more standardized English than hers. Although KB uses African American Vernacular English, she believes that she can eventually “talk the same [as Anne] and be alike in other ways” (7).
The car breaks down just short of their destination, so the two sisters have to get out and push the car. Jacquee wears the fixed smile that she always maintains no matter the circumstances. KB describes her smile as “a gigantic, dripping ice cream cone, after I stuff my belly full with dinner. Even with a stomachache, I want that smile” (7). This time, the smile looks strained. When the family arrives at Granddaddy’s house, it is clear that Jacquee and her father do not get along. Jacquee tells her daughters that she is leaving them with Granddaddy and is not sure when she will return. She encourages the girls to see their stay as a good thing and hugs and kisses them.
KB can’t turn her feelings of sadness and abandonment off no matter how hard she tries, but she does eventually manage to plaster on the fake smile her mother uses in the face of trials. Nia and KB share a conspiratorial laugh over the ridiculousness of being grateful for being left behind.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
KB struggles to settle in. She accuses Nia of behaving so poorly that their mother had to leave the girls in Lansing. Granddaddy forces them to make up by telling them to clean the house together. Nia pretends to be nice, but KB sees beyond her words. Nia later tells KB that the kind of reconciliation KB reads about in Anne of Green Gables is impossible for the two sisters. KB feels lonely as a result. When she goes to look for other children, the only ones she sees are a white boy and girl, and their mother tells them not to play with KB.
Charlie, a deacon in her grandfather’s church, is having a Bible study with Granddaddy when KB returns. She surreptitiously listens as the two men discuss Jacquee receiving some sort of treatment, which is news to KB. Adults are always keeping secrets from her. The two men study the story of Job, a man who loses everything and communes silently with his friends for comfort. She listens as the two men discuss passages from Proverbs about the importance of having allies and using money wisely.
Afterward, Granddaddy warns KB to avoid Bobby and Charlotte because their family harbors prejudice against Black people. KB knows little about racism aside from some lessons on Rosa Parks at school. Granddaddy tells her stories to teach her more. When he was seven, a white man called him a racist slur and stole all his money because he believed that theft was the only way a Black person could have money. Granddaddy’s father worked on a farm owned by a white person and made only seven pennies. KB concludes that Granddaddy isn’t stingy, as her mother claims; losing and not having money probably makes him sad. KB knows that she has a dime in her pocket, so she isn’t particularly concerned about what her grandfather tells her. She believes that racism like that is a thing of the past.
Not everything is as serious as these moments. One night, KB’s grandfather takes her outside to see the flashing of fireflies, a novel thing for a city child like KB. Granddaddy tells her that the secret to catching one is moving slowly. This lesson is like one of the few that KB’s father taught her as well. Her father told KB that the secret to winning at cards is to arrange your cards before you play.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 2 Analysis
Through her prologue and description of family dynamics, Kai Harris establishes the central conflicts of the novel and the struggles of 10-year-old protagonist KB during a tumultuous period in her life.
The prologue of the novel is the traumatic moment when KB, a child, is forced to confront experiences for which she is developmentally unprepared. The discovery of her father’s body is a shocking event that forces KB to confront death in a visceral way. Despite this shocking discovery, KB is perfectly calm when she informs her mother. This is just one of several moments when KB has to act as an adult. KB’s adultification is such that she only gives herself permission to scream once her mother does, and even then, she carefully notes the tenor of her mother’s reaction. Her later mimicry of her mother’s “ice cream cone smile” (7) shows that she is already learning the lesson that trauma and fear must be met not only with stoicism but cheer, yet the “ice cream cone” metaphor employs a childish image that highlights the adultification of a child. This lesson is one that doesn’t allow KB to acknowledge the intense feelings that come with a parent’s death and later living as an unhoused family.
KB is already Learning to See Adults as Flawed. KB begins to see her parents in a different light after her father’s death. The police description of her father teaches her that people see her father with contempt due to the stigmatization of substance abuse. Nia is her partner in this new view of adults. The shared laughter between the girls after their mother tries to put a positive spin on leaving her daughters indefinitely is evidence of their skepticism of adults. KB also changes the way she sees her mother. Despite her mother’s false cheer, KB experiences her mother’s departure as abandonment rather than an attempt to create safety for her daughters.
Granddaddy’s gruff manner and the strained interaction between Granddaddy and Jacquee are all signs that KB will likely not receive the emotional support that she needs as she deals with her father’s death. When KB eavesdrops on the conversation between Granddaddy and Charlie, she does so because she already suspects that adults use Secrets and Lies to prevent her from understanding events that have a direct impact on her. Harris uses this framing device of eavesdropping on a conversation to align the reader with KB’s position on the peripheries of an adult world and her experience of learning via fragments and inferences.
KB also has to contend with changes in her relationship with Nia. Like KB, Nia is dealing with the trauma of losing her father and losing her home. Nia is closer in age to KB than her mother. Because of the difference in their developmental stages, however, Nia and KB experience this trauma differently, leading to conflict in the next most important relationship in KB’s life.
These chapters also include key lessons that move KB closer to Coming of Age. Lessons and stories change the way KB sees the world and her place in it. KB’s formal education has failed to teach her about intersecting oppression rooted in class and race; the school reduces struggles against racism and oppression to historical lessons on Rosa Parks. When KB encounters discrimination from the mother of the children down the street, she doesn’t have enough knowledge to understand the woman’s actions in a larger, more contemporary context.
That context comes through adults’ storytelling and through life lessons. Granddaddy’s stories give KB a better understanding of him and the impact of race and class on Black Americans. While she understands that racism is a reality that may have shaped who Granddaddy is in the present moment of the novel, she still fails to understand that this reality may have an impact on her. Her comment about the dime in her pocket, like the “ice cream cone” metaphor, shows her innocence. Harris chooses each item to amass the paraphernalia of childhood in the novel’s imagery.
Despite her innocence, KB is old enough that she is seeking other texts that will help her understand her life. These lenses include the books that she reads, with Anne of Green Gables being the most central and the Bible verses she overhears being a distant second. Across the boundaries of race and dialect, KB sees herself as an Anne-like figure who has to learn to “fit in where she don’t belong” (7) and Granddaddy as a gruff figure like Marilla, Anne’s stern guardian, in that he “ain’t talk […] much” (20) to KB when KB first arrives at his home.
Anne of Green Gables helps KB to see the unfamiliar and uncomfortable as familiar and as things that she can endure. So does her interaction with nature. She notes that the fireflies, which become the central symbol of the novel, finally help her bond with her grandfather. Having access to children’s and middle grade literature as well as nature ultimately makes KB more resilient. In subsequent chapters, KB finds other texts—formal and informal—to deal with what life throws at her.
