112 pages • 3 hours read
Jesmyn WardThe Fire This Time
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A 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.
Before You Read
Summary
“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown
Introduction by Jesmyn Ward
“Homegoing, AD” by Kima Jones
“The Weight” by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
“Lonely in America” by Wendy S. Walters
“Where Do We Go from Here?” by Isabel Wilkerson
“‘The Dear Pledges of Our Love’: A Defense of Phillis Wheatley’s Husband” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
“White Rage” by Carol Anderson
“Cracking the Code” by Jesmyn Ward
“Queries of Unrest” by Clint Smith
“Blacker Than Thou” by Kevin Young
“Da Art of Storytellin’ (a Prequel)” by Kiese Laymon
“Black and Blue” by Garnette Cadogan
“The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning” by Claudia Rankine
“Know Your Rights!” by Emily Raboteau
“Composite Pops” by Mitchell S. Jackson
“Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha Trethewey
“This Far: Notes on Love and Revolution” by Daniel José Older
“Message to My Daughters” by Edwidge Danticat
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
“Know Your Rights!” by Emily RaboteauChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Reckoning”
Essay Summary: “Know Your Rights!”
After the Charleston shooting in 2015, Emily Raboteau takes her children to see the recently reopened High Bridge in New York City. The bridge connects the Bronx with Harlem and was closed for over forty years. The events of that summer, which also saw the death of Michael Brown, make Raboteau wonder how she should talk about the police with her young children.
The family walks to The High Bridge in the heat. The Charleston shooting and the shooting of Michael Brown by the police are fresh in Raboteau’s mind, as are the deaths of Freddy Gray, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice, exacerbating her outrage. These events provoked citizen protests, demonstrations of civil disobedience, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Vintage and new slogans resounded throughout this resistance.
Raboteau’s four-year-old son complains about the heat and the long walk to The High Bridge. A Ben Sargent cartoon called “Still Two Americas” depicts a black and a white boy leaving home. The white boy’s mother urges him to wear his jacket, and the black boy’s mother lists how he should behave to avoid suspicion related to 
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