Round 1: If I could use one word to describe what Rachel's survival looked like it would be independence. This is because without her immediate family, Rachel is largely on her own throughout the book. She has no one to empathize with in her struggles of mixed race, an lives a life with a parental void, for the most part, aside from what Drew did. She realizes this independence, and embraces it as a part of herself. I think this independence causes her to form a unique identity, which benefits her.
Round 2: As Durrow said in her interview with Norris, she thought it would be interesting to write a book about the survival of a girl after the tragedy she experienced. So I concur with this point, that the main topic of the book is not the incident on the roof. However, I do believe that the characters involved are centered around the incident, and that the plot revolves around the incident, starting with it at the beginning, coming to it intermittently throughout, and ending with it. Yet the gist of the story is about Rachel -- the girl who fell from the sky and survived -- and her coping with the struggles of being the only survivor in her mixed race family, as well as the other people's lives after the incident. You cannot write a story exclusively about one event.
Round 3: Nella is certainly one of the most polarizing characters in the book. What she did, in giving up and jumping off the roof with her children, is selfish to me. Her children deserved better. Yet, at the same time, Rachel appears to understand why her mother did such a thing. Their lives were a struggle -- coping with abuse, alcoholism, and the constant lack of a fatherly figure in the household, illustrated by Nella's agonized diary entries. I have some empathy for Nella, because of this. Rachel understood why Mor couldn't take it anymore, she realized that Mor did it to alleviate the pain of her children. For me, this was not the way for Nella to love her children, to diminish their pain. I cannot understand why she did it. But I think, in her confusion, the only certain way to diminish the pain and stay with her family was to die with them.
Round 4: Silence plays a prominent role in both the Girl Who Fell from the Sky and the Grace of Silence. It shapes the identities of the characters by them growing up in oblivion, to their benefit and detriment. They were not hindered by struggles of their family, but they were also not strengthened by being able to move on from the secrets that were kept. The telling of stories about families makes individuals into more complete people. The unknown is dangerous, and secrets separate people. They perpetuate the single story. Rachel not addressing the tragedy caused her to be burdened, until she finally did. Racism, too is perpetuated by silence. We cannot get over, nor address the problem in hushed whispers. One example of this in when Aunt Loretta and her friend kept information from Rachel about her race.
Round 5: This extended metaphor throughout the book of falling versus flying is profound. The theme, I think, is does one plunge into despair, or is one resilient, and are they able to fly away from it? Rachel jumps from the roof, as opposed to falling from it. This shows me that she willingly acted to let go of the struggles of her past in an act of family solidarity. Yet she survives, and the incident on the roof stays with her until she has the audacity to talk about it. When she does, she begins to fly, as a swan. She stops running, and takes to the air, away, away. Brick listens, and she releases.
Bonus Round: While the Girl Who Fell from the Sky was a fiction text, it provided very realistic insight into how people would react to and address a tragedy, and how a half Danish, half black girl would cope with the racism she faced. These stories, reading the word, gives us multiple ideas, rather than a single story, to make the world better known. In these ways Heidi Durrow helps me read the world.
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