Meet Gregory Madison

My favourite part about the book is when Maleeka finds out that her Dad, Gregory,
wrote poems. Her father died when she was still young, and she does not have a lot of memories about him. When Maleeka shows her mother her writings, she answers: "You're a good writer. Like your father." (pg. 122-123). To Maleeka, this is a surprise. She finds out that her Dad wrote letters and poems, and that her mother keeps them in a box in her closet, together with other things such as photos and documents. 

When Maleeka opens the box, tears come to her eyes. Then she even finds a poem that her father wrote for her: 

Brown
Beautiful
Brilliant
My my Maleeka
is
Beautiful
Brilliant
Mine

Maleeka reads the poem over and over again. "Momma is calling me. I can't answer. My mouth is full of Daddy's words, and my head is remembering him again. Tall, dark, and smiling all the time." (pg. 123)

I love this part and find it deeply touching. 

At home (1994)

My own father died when I was sixteen, and I can absolutely understand Maleeka's reaction. I guess everyone who's ever lost a loved one can. It's knowing that you'll never again be able to talk to him, ask him your questions. That's why you have to rely on things like pictures, letters, notes, documents, and the memories of other people. 

At home (1993)

A couple of weeks ago, a friend who went to high school with my dad visited my mom. I had dinner with them and loved hearing them talk about old memories. My parents met shortly before graduation, but that woman knew him since 5th grade. They were close friends. She had so many fun stories to tell about him, things that I haven't known before, and that I was probably still too young to know or be interested in when he was still alive. 

Skiing in Bavaria (1996)

Vacation in Florida (1994)

So now, my only chance to find out these kinds of things is through other people. I feel like I'm getting to know my father even more through their memories, and am grateful that they share them with me. 

Vacation in Toscany
(2000)

My dad and my sister (and our dog),
fishing in Sweden (2002)

I'm sad that I never got to know my father from a grown-up perspective. As a child, he was the best father a girl could ask for, but now that I'm older, I would have loved to have him with me, supporting me, giving me advice, and sharing everything with him. There are so many things that he missed, and many more to come. 
But by remembering him, reading letters (or e-mails) that I treasure, looking at pictures, and talking to my family and (his) friends about him, and I can try to imagine what his feelings and views would be of decisions that I make and things that I experience. This way, I feel like a part of him - I know this sounds cheesy! - lives on, and that he isn't that far away from me after all. 

Meet Miss Saunders

Freak.
That is the first word that comes to Maleeka's mind when she first meets Miss Saunders.
Michael Saunders (never heard "Michael" as a girls name before) has a large scar, a "giant white stain" halfway across her face, "like somebody tossed acid on it or something" (pg. 1). She is the new English teacher at Maleeka's school. When she first meets Maleeka, she says to her: "Maleeka, your ski is pretty. Like a blue-black sky after it's rained and rained" (pg. 3). Imagine this: you're being bullied the whole time at school anyway, partly about the color of your skin, and now there is this new, strange-looking teacher who walks up to you and says these things about your skin. I can understand that Maleeka gets angry and embarrassed, I guess in that age and in her situation you're not yet confident enough to accept this compliment. When you just want to look and be like everybody else, you don't want someone to say these things about you, no matter how beautiful and poetic these words are. And no matter how well they are meant. Maleeka just wants to be let alone, but Miss Saunders seems to be on to her.
In the beginning of her first lesson, Ms. Saunders asks her students what their faces tell about them. Then she shares her story, how she was born with this scar, and how it took her a long time to accept and love herself. For someone like Maleeka, this is the most important lesson she yet has to learn. Miss Saunders wants her students to be able to "look in the mirror and like what you see, even when it doesn't look like anybody else's idea of beauty" (pg. 20). Look at the picture I found about this! Really, what do our faces tell the world about us? And why do we judge people just by the look of them, if we don't want them to do that to us in return?

A friend of mine just posted on facebook: "To be a teacher means to give children wings". What a great saying! And it fits Miss Saunders so well. For a writing assignment, Maleeka begins to write the diary of a girl who is brought as a slave on a ship from Africa to America. Her name is Akeelma (name change of Maleeka). Miss Saunders encourages Maleeka to write this diary even after the assignment is over, and Maleeka proves her talent for changing her perspective to Akeelma's, making her seem real and believable. For Maleeka, writing this diary becomes a way of dealing with her own problems and worries, and to her, Akeelma really comes to life: "Mostly, I'm thinking and writing in my diary - our dieary, Akeelma's and mine. Lately it's hard to know where Akeelma's thoughts begin and mine end" (pg. 96). Miss Saunders encourages Maleeka to turn in her writings in a library contest, and she actually wins.
It is not just this, but many things that Miss Saunders does for Maleeka and says to her, that help her see the good inside of her. She is smart, she is likeable, she has a loving family, and a boy tells her that he likes her and thinks she's pretty - all of these things make her finally accept who she is, and like herself for this. She is able to seperate herself from Char and the other girls, and becomes confident of herself and the skin she's in.

Meet Maleeka Madison

Bookcover

Sharon G. Flake

I've been wanting to read "The Skin I'm in" by Sharon G. Flake (1998) book for a long time, it's been on my "Save for later"-list from Amazon for at least two years. After reading it, I must say, it did not disappoint me! What a great novel! It was very easy reading, and the story is gripping and touching. Flake received the "Coretta Scott King/ John Steptoe Award for New Talent" for this novel - and she deserved it 100%!

It is about a teenage-girl, Maleeka Madison, who is in 7th grade at some junior high school, somewhere in the U.S. Her classmates are giving her a hard time; although she is not the only black girl at the school, everybody's bullying her about it. Like John-John, who is black as well, but makes everyone else tease her with a song he made up: "Maleeka, Maleeka - baboom, bom, boom, we sure wanna keep her, baboom, boom, boom, but she so black, baboom, boom, boom, we just can't see her." 
To make things worse, her family does not have enough money to buy her "proper" clothes, (although the word "proper" here is clearly defined by her classmates, especially Charlese, who always wears new, modern and very expensive clothing) and her mother sews most of her clothes herself - making them look like it, too. Maleeka and her "friend" Charlese, who is the coolest girl of the school and always gets in trouble for skipping classes, smoking, being sassy to the teachers and the principal, and who lives with her older sister, who does not look after her very well but is more interested in partying after their parents died, made a deal: "Char" protects Maleeka from the other kids, by including her in her "in-group", and sometimes even brings her some of her old, used clothes; therefore, Maleeka does all the homework for Char and the rest of the group. 
As you might expect, there is nothing in that relationship that marks a real friendship. Neither of the sides is loyal to the other, and Char and the others let Maleeka down as soon as they don't "need" her anymore. They know that they can do whatever they want to with her, like blaming the guilt for tricks they play on teachers or students on her, and that Maleeka would never do anything about it; she's too much dependant on them. By the way, "tricks" is not really the right word for it, because one time they destroy a classroom and set it on fire for getting back on a teacher, and blame it all on Maleeka. 
It's so sad, really. Maleeka is such a likeable girl, but I think most of us can identify with her situation, especially everyone who's ever experienced only the slightest bit of bullying during their puberty-years. Wanting only to fit in makes it so difficult to stand up against injustice, on yourself or on others. I really like the character Flake invented. Maleeka is smart, loving, creative, and very thoughtful, but her junior-high years are the living hell for her, bringing her to make bad decisions and set wrong priorities.