82 pages • 2 hours read
Elizabeth AcevedoWith the Fire on High
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019A 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.
Part 1, Chapters 1-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Sour”
Part 1, Chapters 1-22 Summary
Teenager Emoni Santiago is preparing her two-year old child, “Babygirl,” for daycare. Her grandmother, ’Buela, whom she lives with in Philadelphia, is going to drop the girl off, as Emoni must go to school for the first day of the new term. Emoni explains the choice to give her child the name Emma. Her reasoning is that such a name “doesn’t tell you too much before you meet her” (9). In other words, this name will not reveal anything about her ethnicity. Emoni talks with her best friend, Angelica, on the way to school. Angelica came out as lesbian the previous year, and Emoni agrees to make a meal for Angelica and her girlfriend, Laura, for their six-month anniversary.
In “Magic,” Emoni discusses her special connection with food and cookery. This started as a child when, left in the kitchen, she added spices to a dish that was cooking, creating what ’Buela said was the best thing she had ever tasted.
Emoni goes into “advisory,” a class designed to give personal and career advice. She talks with teacher Ms. Fuentes about her summer job at a burger restaurant and how she is juggling this work with caring for her baby. Emoni reflects on her pregnancy at age 15 and the physical and emotional challenges, and disapproval, she’s had to overcome. She notes how her grandmother and Ms. Fuentes fought to keep her in ordinary school rather than move her to a program for pregnant teens. In class, Ms. Fuentes announces that a new student will be joining and that new elective modules are available to select. Emoni is excited by the one titled “Culinary Arts: Spain Immersion” (25), which includes a trip to Sevilla, Spain.
Back home, Emoni starts cooking a meal with help of ’Buela, who is going out to play bingo. Emoni reveals her interest in the culinary arts class, but ’Buela is worried about the potential cost of the Spain trip. Emoni discusses her ambition to be a chef, which was inspired by watching cooking shows as a child. However, she was not able to attend a nearby school with a prestigious culinary arts program as her grades were not good enough.
Back in class, Ms. Fuentes introduces the new student from another city, Malachi Johnson. Emoni describes him as “a tall, dark-skinned dude” (38), and she finds him attractive, especially after she sees his smile and hears him speak. Emoni talks about how she met Tyrone, the father of her child, at a party. He was a “pretty boy,” older, and “had a way with words” (42). They had sex, but the experience was not enjoyable, and she was upset afterwards.
Tyrone comes to pick up Emma on Saturday morning, as he has been doing every other weekend since gaining partial custody in the summer. He will drop her off on Sunday evening, but the baby cries as she leaves Emoni’s house. Emoni talks about her relationship with Tyrone after they found out she was pregnant. As she says, “we played at being together” (50), but it was clear that, despite having sex a few more times after the birth, they were not compatible.
’Buela and Emoni anxiously await Emma’s return on Sunday. Even though it was only a day, Emoni did not enjoy the freedom or time apart from her child and is overjoyed when she returns. Emoni discusses her parents. ’Buela, her father’s mother, has been like a mother to her; her real mother, Nya, died when she was born. Emoni wonders if she would have gotten pregnant if her mother were still alive.
Emoni learns from Ms. Fuentes that she has been accepted into the culinary arts class at school. The first lesson of this elective will start later that day. In “College Essay: First Draft,” Emoni says her father, Julio, visits her for one month every year. He could not cope with being a single parent after Emoni’s mother’s death and returned to Puerto Rico, where he now spends most of his time.
Emoni has her first culinary arts class and is impressed by the kitchen equipment. However, she is frustrated when the teacher, Chef Ayden, makes them spend the lesson learning how to use knives rather than cooking. After class, Malachi catches up with Emoni and tries to talk with her. She is offended when he makes a comment about her race, assuming she was Spanish and not fully Black or “Black-black” (66).
Following on from the discussion with Malachi, Emoni talks about her race. She reflects on how although she sees herself as Black and Hispanic and has roots in both cultures, people often want to pigeonhole her into one or the other. Angelica asks Emoni who she was talking to in the hall. She reveals that it was the new student, Malachi, from Newark. Angelica can tell that Emoni likes him and says they should go to the prom together.
In “Salty,” the final chapter of this section, Emoni serves a customer at the Burger Joint, the restaurant where she works. The food there is poor, but her manager, Steve, criticizes Emoni for failing to show sufficient enthusiasm in selling it.
Part 1, Chapters 1-22 Analysis
Early in the book, Emoni explains, “I was that girl your moms warn you about being friends with. And warns you about becoming” (21). This was because she got pregnant in high school. Girls like her are meant to serve as cautionary tales. They are supposed to be proof of the negative consequences of immoral or rebellious behavior, especially when it comes to sex. Further, underlying this “warning” is the assumption that teenage pregnancy is necessarily onerous. Teen pregnancy and motherhood are, in this view, not only unpleasant and destructive for the individual, but also shameful.
The potential shame of teen pregnancy comes because groups and individuals stigmatize teenage mothers. This is what Emoni experienced. She recalls how the old men, “viejos” “playing dominoes on the corner shook their heads when I walked past” (22), and that “dudes on the train smirked” (22). It is the responses of these people which helps make teen pregnancy the very “shameful” thing they assert it to be.
Teenage pregnancy is also discouraged because it involves challenges that those still in school are ill-equipped to cope with. These are partly physical. Emoni mentions how she had to sit at the desk next to the door in class because she “had to rush to the bathroom every five minutes” (19). Similarly, she had to take countless make-up tests because of doctor appointments or because she was “too morning sick to make it to school” (22). In short, her school attendance and concentration were disrupted by the physical complications of being pregnant. Then there are the economic challenges. Emoni works at the Burger Joint to help pay for the expense of having a child. Her grandmother, whom she lives with, must make the little money she gets from odd jobs and disability checks stretch even further. This financial hardship creates stress for the family. Having to work also makes it harder for Emoni to succeed at school, and it constrains her freedom to make life decisions, such as whether to apply for college.
That said, Elizabeth Acevedo does not suggest that Emoni’s situation is all negative. Even though her pregnancy was unplanned, Emoni clearly loves her child. Indeed, the freedom she lost by having a baby as a teenager is not something she misses. She anxiously awaits the return of Emma when she stays merely one day at her father’s house, and she describes the feeling of being apart from her child, even temporarily, as “a rip in the fabric of my life” (52). As such, Acevedo warns the reader against lazy assumptions about characters like Emoni. Older or more economically secure individuals do not necessarily make better or more loving parents. Nor are teenage parents necessarily irresponsible. Emoni is fastidious in caring for Emma and her needs, even to the point of realizing that Emma needs to see her father, Tyrone.
Tyron’s role is more ambiguous. On the one hand, Tyrone lost interest in Emoni once he had slept with her. He also visited Emma only occasionally after the birth. However, he was nevertheless present to some degree. His taking of custody of Emma every other weekend also indicates a growing sense of responsibility to his child and the mother of his child. He has not shirked his obligations entirely.
Emoni faces the challenge of how to negotiate Tyrone’s growing role in her child’s life. She clearly harbors resentment towards Tyrone over his behavior and has no interest in a romantic relationship with him. However, she must put her frustrations with Tyrone aside for the welfare of Emma. This view is informed by her own father’s role in her life. He moved back to Puerto Rico when she was born and now only sees her one month each year. She understands the damage such neglect can cause. It is just another one of the challenges Emoni must confront. Still, it is one of many that make her a stronger and richer individual. It is a challenge that, along with her child, makes her the person she is.
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