Ordinary Hazards

Ordinary Hazards (2019) is a memoir in verse by Nikki Grimes. This story offers a glimpse of the author’s difficult childhood, including her exposure to addiction, abuse, and neglect. Grimes highlights her journey through adolescence and how writing and her faith helped her navigate her circumstances. The book explores the themes The Impact of Trauma on Memory, The Role of Emotional Support in Building Resilience, and The Healing Power of Creative Expression.

Nikki Grimes is a celebrated American writer and artist who has written award-winning books for children, including the Coretta Scott King Award–winner Bronx Masquerade and the ALA Notable books What is Goodbye? and Words with Wings. She has been writing verse since she was six years old and has written poetry for both children and adults. Grimes is a recipient of the NCTE Award for Poetry and received the Children’s Literature Legacy Award in 2017 for her “substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” She was further presented with the 2022 Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award (“Biography.” Nikki Grimes).

This guide is based on the 2019 Astra Publishing House Kindle Edition.

Note: The source text often blurs past and present events, narrating past events in the present with present-day commentary by the author. This guide reflects this writing style.

Content Warning: The source text contains references to and descriptions of child abuse, substance use and addiction, sexual assault, and trauma. The text also contains outdated and stigmatizing language and descriptions surrounding mental health conditions. Additionally, this study guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word.

Plot Summary

Nikki recalls her difficult childhood as an adult. Nikki is the younger of two daughters. Her parents are separated; her father has a gambling addiction, while her mother, Bernice, has an alcohol addiction and schizophrenia. Nikki has an older sister, Carol, and their father is only intermittently present in their early years. She and Carol live with Bernice, who is always working to make ends meet. Nikki and Carol are abused by the babysitters left in charge of them while Bernice is away. As Bernice’s drinking increases, she is absent for longer stretches of time, until Child Services eventually take Nikki and Carol away.

Nikki and Carol cycle through multiple foster homes together, facing different kinds of abuse. They eventually run away from one of the homes and make it to their grandmother Grandma Mac’s house, as they don’t know where Bernice is. Grandma Mac refuses to care for them and turns them over to Child Services, and the sisters are brought back into the system but separated.

Nikki is taken in by a family in Ossining, the Buchanans—a large family with four other children. Nikki is initially wary and refuses to speak at all, expecting to be locked up and abused here as well. However, she is loved and well looked after by the Buchanans, and she begins to settle in and open up. Nikki enjoys school, working hard and doing well. She also joins extracurriculars like ballet and the church choir. She faces some racism both at school and in friendships but begins writing to process and vent all the pain and hurt she has experienced and continues to face. Writing, along with her deep faith in God, keeps her going.

Despite her happy new life, Nikki misses Carol and also keeps hoping that Bernice will come collect her; she eventually learns of her mother’s diagnosis from a social worker. Once her mother is on medication and doing better, Nikki begins to visit both of her parents on weekends, and even finally visits Carol in the foster care set up she is in. Unlike Nikki, Carol is not happy where she is.

Bernice gets remarried and decides to take Nikki in. Nikki is reluctant to leave the Buchanans, whom she has come to love, but she cannot deny her mother either. She moves back to the city with Bernice and her new husband, Clark, whom Nikki is wary of from the start. Nikki finds it difficult to adjust to her new neighborhood, constantly having to avoid danger in the form of street gangs. She misses her father, too. She doesn’t see him anymore because Bernice asks him to stay away. Carol comes to live with Bernice, Clark, and Nikki for a brief time; however, she is sent away again following an incident between Clark and Carol. Nikki receives no explanation about what happened.

During all this, Nikki is not comforted by Bernice, who is rarely around. Bernice pretends not to see Nikki’s difficulties and gives her no real affection or encouragement. Bernice continues to have spells at the hospital, especially when she stops taking her medication and starts drinking again, which triggers psychotic episodes. School is the one thing Nikki enjoys. She continues to work hard and do well, especially at writing.

As Nikki grows up, she learns about and becomes more aware of her identity as a Black person, with historic events such as the civil rights movement shaping her consciousness. However, as she grows, Clark behaves increasingly more inappropriately with Nikki. He sexually abuses her one night, after which Nikki begins sleeping with a knife under her pillow. She also divines that something similar must have happened with Carol to cause her to leave.

Bernice and Clark have a fight one night, and he pushes Bernice down the stairs. Nikki is so enraged that she almost stabs Clark but orders him to leave the house instead. She lives with her father for a short while, but Clark eventually returns. Nikki contemplates going to live with Carol, who is 17 and has her own apartment and a job. However, Nikki doesn’t want to leave Bernice alone with Clark.

Clark finally leaves Bernice’s and Nikki’s lives for good, and the two of them move to Washington Heights. Though a mid-term move has Nikki working hard to catch up at school, she rises to the challenge and does well. Nikki also stops relying on her mother for emotional support and forges a strong network in her new home. She makes close friends, Debra and Gail, and begins to spend more time with Carol, her father, and Grandma Mac, who tries hard to make amends. Although Nikki’s father is still not the most reliable presence, he loves her deeply and shares her interests: He exposes her to different kinds of literature, art, and culture. He and Carol encourage Nikki’s dreams of writing, as does Nikki’s new English teacher, Mrs. Wexler.

When Nikki is in high school, her father gets into a car accident and passes away from brain damage a few weeks later. A grieving Nikki is supported by her friends and Mrs. Wexler. She also finds comfort in literature and writing. Bernice starts drinking again and has another psychotic episode, in which she throws away all of Nikki’s notebooks. This is the last straw for Nikki, who moves in with her now-adult sister. Nikki does much better at Carol’s, who encourages her to keep writing. The book ends with Nikki, one year after moving in with Carol, meeting the author James Baldwin at an event. He reads her work and asks her to call him, and she does.