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 23-41 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Sour”
Part 1, Chapters 23-41 Summary
Emma, “Babygirl,” is having a tantrum, and Emoni tries to calm her. Emoni believes these tantrums started when Emma began to visit Tyrone and wonders if it is because his family is spoiling her. Emoni reflects more on her father. She loves that he reads to her over the phone and notes that he tries “to instill a love of knowledge into me” (80). He is also helpful when he visits. However, she is frustrated that he does not stay longer.
Malachi tries to talk with Emoni again, asking why she was so quiet in advisory class. He gives her the nickname “Santi.” To forestall any overfamiliarity, she tells him that they are not friends. In “A Tale of Two Cities,” Emoni explains where she comes from in Philadelphia. It is a predominantly Puerto Rican area called Fairhill that reminds her of the book the Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities (85). On the one hand, there is poverty and gang violence, but the neighborhood also has a sense of community and people who help one another.
Chef Ayden gives the class a surprise test on food hygiene. Emoni recognizes its importance as passing the ServSafe hygiene test will allow her to work in restaurants. She gets two of the questions wrong, however, in an oral test. In another exercise, Chef Ayden asks the class to make chocolate puddings. Emoni impresses him by adding smoked paprika to her version of it, and Ayden claims that the ancient Aztecs used to do something similar with chocolate. Emoni blushes with pride. Emoni cooks at home, she explains, to deal with the anxieties in her life—namely, her uncertainties about Tyrone, the food class, her father, and college. She cooks through intuition rather than rules, and her chicken dish makes ’Buela cry with happiness.
Angelica and Emoni discuss college applications. Emoni tells her friend, “You see the world like no one else” (99), and she encourages her to apply to the best art programs. Emoni, however, is worried about how she is going to juggle college with looking after Emma. In class they cook paella with saffron and chorizo. Chef Ayden announces that for the trip to Sevilla in two months each student must raise $800. Emoni wonders how she will possibly find that sort of money.
After class Emoni walks past Malachi talking to “Pretty Leslie,” another girl from culinary arts. Leslie insults Emoni, asking “How’s your daughter?” (106). However, Malachi asks Emoni to get ice cream with him in front of Leslie. She agrees. Emoni talks with Angelica about Malachi and Leslie’s comment. Leslie, they agree, was deliberately trying to reveal to him that Emoni has a child. Angelica tags along on the ice cream date with Emoni and Malachi at first, then leaves them to talk alone.
Coming home after her date, Emoni says, “The smile he put on my face is still clinging onto my lips when I walk through the house door” (114). She clearly enjoyed her date with Malachi, but ’Buela informs her that she missed a call from her father, Julio. Emoni calls back Julio. They discuss her upcoming trip to Spain, and he gives her a lecture on colonialism and how Puerto Rican cuisine was appropriated by the Spanish. In their conversation, it is clear there is an emotional distance between Emoni and her father.
In advisory class the students are given questionnaires to fill in about college and job opportunities after high school. Ms. Fuentes encourages Emoni to consider college, but Emoni believes she would be better off going directly into paid work. Emoni talks to Angelica about a design for an album cover she has drawn and reflects on the artistic talent of her friend. She worries, in contrast, that she’ll be unsuccessful. Emoni is also concerned by ’Buela’s recent visits to doctors.
In front of the class, Chef Ayden asks Emoni to throw away a dish that she just made because, although it tastes good, she did not followed the approved recipe. Emoni considers dropping the cooking class. Emoni is so angry that she skips her last class of the day and goes straight to pick up Emma from daycare. There she meets ’Buela, who is not critical of her for missing class because she trusts Emoni to make her own decisions.
In “I Been Grown,” Emoni reflects on the tough decisions she has had to make in her life. Specifically, she thinks about the decision to keep the baby and how neither ’Buela nor Tyrone pressured her about this.
A weather report on the news reveals that a hurricane is going to hit Puerto Rico. Emoni rushes to call her father, who lives there. Despite Emoni and ’Buela’s pleas for him to leave, Julio wants to stay and help his community through the crisis.
Part 1, Chapters 23-41 Analysis
In “Tantrums and Terrible Twos,” Emoni observes how “Babygirl” has started having tantrums after starting to spend more time with Tyrone’s family. This comment is significant in several respects. First, it betrays an anxiety on the part of Emoni about potential separation from her child and the trauma this causes. It also reflects, and serves as a metaphor for, the conflicted relationship to place and home that occurs throughout the novel. This theme is seen in Emoni’s reflections on her own neighborhood in Philadelphia, Fairhill. As she says, “I come from a place that’s as sweet as the freshest berry, as sour as curdled milk; where we dream of owning mansions and leaving the hood; where we couldn’t imagine having been raised anywhere else” (87).
Despite its limitations, and its dangers, Emoni is deeply attached to Fairhill. Her sense of self is linked to the community and its mixed Puerto Rican American identity. This is clear in her admiration for the dance groups that perform at summer parties and for the recreational center that offers free parenting classes and counseling. Poverty and common struggle have forged a strong sense of community in Fairhill. At the same time, Emoni fears being stuck there. As she says after talking about Angelica’s talent and how it will take her to new places, “I’m also going to still be here, left behind” (126). On the one hand, she fears the loss of a sense of place and identity. On the other, she acknowledges the necessity of escaping Fairhill if she is to provide a better life for Emma.
This conflict is represented symbolically by the trip to Spain. The desire to visit Sevilla, and learn about a different cuisine, represents Emoni’s aspiration to explore new horizons and possibilities. In addition, the fulfilment of this desire, like so many others, depends on, and is constrained by, money. Further, this conflict is manifest in the character of Julio, Emoni’s father. In one sense, Julio’s attachment to place is admirable: When a hurricane is about to hit Puerto Rico, Julio decides to stay and help organize relief efforts there rather than getting a flight to the United States and safety. As he says, “You gotta make your home better; you don’t just run because you can” (138).
Such a sentiment seems like an explicit riposte to the attitude expressed earlier by Emoni. This is the view that one should ultimately aspire to escape from deprived neighborhoods rather than working to improve them. In contrast, Julio suggests that a genuine love of place and home means subordinating self-interest to the communal good. It means staying somewhere and helping to improve conditions for all, not just working so that one day you can live somewhere else.
At the same time, however, Julio is guilty of trying to escape in his own ways. His return to Puerto Rico after the death of Emoni’s mother was a way of evading both grief and responsibility. His alleged love of home became a cover for emotional regression. He was unable or unwilling to deal with the death of his partner, and he is also unable to fully accept his role as Emoni’s father, and shown by his literal and unannounced escapes from Emoni’s life at the end of each July. His passion for his island becomes an easy substitute for more a problematic engagement with personal relationships. As Emoni says, the result is that “although he cares about his community, his own family gets the short end of the stick” (117).
Moreover, there are other dangers in Julio’s attitude. An excessive concern for the place one grew up in can make one closed off to other cultures. This tendency is seen in Julio’s attitude towards the Spain trip. He scoffs at the idea that Spanish cuisine could possibly contain anything that was not already present in, or stolen from, Puerto Rico. In this way he denies the possibility of meaningful interchanges or dialogues between cultures. He also denies and represses his own personal history: Julio was, after all, an immigrant who left Puerto Rico for America, and he married an American woman, Emoni’s mother, there. As such, Acevedo suggests that Julio is fleeing into his past. In contrast, Emoni, while acknowledging her roots, is open to new places and experiences. Thus, she can grow emotionally and is able to confront change in a healthier and more mature way than her father.
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