103 pages • 3 hours read
Alicia D. WilliamsGenesis Begins Again
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | 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.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Genesis is thrilled because a group of girls from school have finally agreed to hang out at her house after school. Her excitement quickly disappears as she and the girls turn the corner to her house. All her family’s belongings are on their lawn and a lock has been bolted to their door. They’ve been kicked out of their home, again.
The girls begin to make fun of Genesis and call her names like “Eggplant” and “Char.” “Char” is supposed to be short for “Charcoal,” an insult used to mock her for her dark skin. After the girls leave, Genesis lays down on her bed on the lawn and pulls out “The List,” a list that two girls made when Genesis was in fifth grade called “100 Reasons Why We Hate Genesis.” They only wrote sixty reasons, so Genesis has been filling out the rest herself. She adds reason 85, her friends ditch her after they see all of her belongings on the lawn, and 86, she lets those “friends” call her names like Charcoal and Eggplant.
A cab pulls into the driveway, and Genesis’s mom jumps out wearing pink scrubs. Soon after, their landlord lets them back in the house to collect any remaining belongings. Inside, Genesis looks at her reflection and notes her “wide nose […] big lips [… and] nappy head” (10). She tells her reflection that she can’t stand her.
Genesis and Mama go back outside again and sit on the couch until Genesis’s father pulls up in a U-Haul with his friends. Mama is furious with him for not paying the rent again and leaving her to clean up his mess. As they all pile into the U-Haul, Genesis remembers the last time they were evicted. They stayed in her dad’s friend’s basement, and her dad got drunk and said to her, “you were supposed to come out lookin’ like her [Mama]” (14). This time, her dad says that she and Mama are going to be staying temporarily at Grandma’s house, Mama’s mother.
Chapter 2 Summary
Genesis’s father drops her and Mama off at her grandma’s house. Inside, Grandma sends her upstairs to bed. As Genesis digs through her bag for pajamas, she overhears Grandma and Mama arguing. Grandma tells Mama that she should never have married Genesis's father, Emory, and that she always told her he would never make a good husband. She also tells her that had she gone to college, then she wouldn’t be making minimum wage working in a nursing home. She offers for her and Genesis to stay and live with her, but Genesis does not hear Mama’s response. She pretends to be asleep when Mama climbs into bed with her a short while later.
The next morning, Mama has already gone off to work. Genesis notices that there is a big bag of lemons on the counter. When she asks Grandma why she has so many lemons, she tells her that they are a healing fruit. She says that the doctor on TV claims they will even help the dark spots on her hands fade. Genesis starts to feel a glimmer of hope that the lemons might work to lighten her skin, so she takes a shower and then rubs a lemon all over her skin and even under her gums.
Afterward, she watches Dr. Oz on TV with Grandma and asks if she puts anything else on her dark spots besides lemons to lighten them. Her grandma says she also uses a bit of exfoliation.
Later that night, Genesis is thrilled to find some exfoliating cream in her grandma’s cabinet. She rubs another lemon on her skin and then the cream and goes to bed hopeful.
Chapter 3 Summary
Genesis wakes up in the morning disappointed to find that the lemons have not made her skin any lighter. She overhears Mama on the phone with her dad. He pulls up to the driveway an hour later to take them to their new home in Farmington Hills, an extremely well-off neighborhood where he has rented a ranch style house from a colleague.
Genesis is happy to see her dad, but he always has a way of making them forget they are mad at him. She wants him to know that she is still angry with him for yet again getting them kicked out of their house, so she attempts to give him the silent treatment. Her father notices and puts in a CD of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Genesis tries to stay angry but can’t help but to sing along with him, just like they used to do when she was younger. As she sings, she imagines herself singing on stage in a short, glittery gold dress with a long, blonde weave like Beyonce, the audience screaming that they love her.
Forty-five minutes later, they arrive at Farmington Hills with its “perfectly manicured lawns, sun-sheltering trees, and green recycling bins” (34). They pull into their development, Farmington Acres. Their new home is a white brick ranch style house. It is much bigger and full of luxuries, such as hardwood floors, a real fireplace, and even a dining room with a chandelier. Genesis’s new school is within walking distance from the house.
Mama is in awe at their new home, but she is worried about how much it will cost. When she repeatedly asks Emory if they can afford it, he tells her there is nothing to worry about and that he is a shoo-in for a promotion at work. He takes Genesis to see her new room, a huge, spacious room with a bed, dresser, and bookshelf. He tells her to get settled while he goes out for a bit. Both Genesis and Mama’s excitement suddenly evaporates into worry. They repeatedly ask him where he is going, but he just smiles and says he will be back soon.
Chapter 4 Summary
Genesis and Mama are hesitant to unpack until Emory comes back, worried that he is going to let them down again. Mama decides to unpack, and Genesis notices she does it quickly, as if she is afraid that her dad will come back and say they have to load the truck back up and leave.
Four hours later, Genesis and Mama are finished unpacking, but Emory is not back yet. Genesis sees how happy Mama looks in her “dream home,” but Genesis is still mad about getting evicted and worried that it will happen again.
An hour later, Emory has still not returned. Mama decides to call for pizza delivery, but she notices that there is money missing from her wallet. Just as she discovers it, Emory arrives back home with Chinese food and groceries. When he takes off his jacket, a poker chip falls out. Mama asks him if gambling was how he paid for all of the food he brought home. His forehead starts to sweat, and he gets defensive. He tells Mama that he has had to make sacrifices and asks her if she’d rather have them starve. As they begin to fight, he pulls out a bottle of alcohol from his jacket and begins to drink straight from it.
Genesis leaves the table so she can avoid seeing him when he gets drunk and mean. A half an hour later, he is drunk, and Genesis can hear her parents shouting. She hears Mama tell him that all of her help and love she has given him isn’t working, and that he needs to go to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Genesis, the novel’s protagonist, narrates the story. She speaks with the informal colloquialism of a 13-year-old girl, which creates a more intimate and vulnerable mood for readers as they experience Genesis’s world through her eyes. The first four chapters of the novel begin to establish the central conflict that runs throughout the novel, which is Genesis’s self-hatred and longing to disassociate from her racial identity as a young, dark-skinned Black girl in a culture that values light skin. When she looks in the mirror in Chapter 1, the voices in her head mock her for her “wide nose” and “big lips” and “nappy head,” and tell her “Don’t get me started on how black you are” (10). In a way, these voices serve as Genesis’s main antagonist in the novel because they represent everyone who has ever made her feel ugly and ashamed, most importantly, her own father.
The opening chapters introduce Genesis’s father, Emory, as a man with two sides to him. On his good days, he is charming and funny, making Genesis laugh as they sing songs together. On his bad days, which are frequent, he struggles with alcohol abuse and a gambling addiction. The introduction of Emory establishes the theme of poverty and addiction early on, which lays the groundwork for the rising action in the novel as Genesis’s father’s drinking and gambling habits continue to negatively impact Genesis and Mama more and more during their time at Farmington Hills. The hopeless cycle is more pronounced since this last move is ironically supposed to be a fresh start after many years of evictions.
These chapters also highlight the negative effect that Emory’s drinking has not only on Genesis’s financial sense of security, but on her emotional security as well. Genesis first touches on the memory of when her dad drunkenly “went off” on her in the basement in Chapter 1 as she remembers him saying, “You were supposed to come out lookin’ like her…look at you with yo’ black—” (14). Her hatred of her dark skin manifests itself in that memory over and over throughout the course of the novel, which begins to set the scene for major themes in the novel such as bullying, family and emotional trauma, and perhaps most importantly, colorism, or a form of discrimination based on skin tone that typically occurs amongst people in the same ethnic or racial group. Genesis’s father is dark-skinned like her, with “full lips, [a] wide nose, and thick eyebrows (30), whereas Mama is light-skinned. His cruel comments to Genesis that she doesn’t look like Mama have clearly left a damaging emotional impact on Genesis, who desperately seeks validation from her father by trying to lighten her skin with yogurt, milk, and lemons. At the beginning of the novel, Genesis is unable to accept herself and love who she is without the validation of others, especially her father, a theme which runs throughout the entire novel.
