73 pages • 2 hours read
Angie ThomasOn the Come Up
Fiction | Novel | YA | 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.
Themes
Racism Within Schools and Communities
Thomas’s works deal heavily with the devastating consequences of racism and young people navigating the difficult waters of prejudice in their daily lives. Like The Hate U Give, Thomas uses On the Come Up to address the long-lasting impact of racial profiling on a child’s life. Bri struggles to find herself amid a tidal wave of other people’s opinions, and being a young Black woman comes with stereotypes that she struggles to break free from.
At the novel's beginning, Bri notices the school security guards eyeing Sonny and Malik, two young Black men. When it comes to these guards, Bri points out that “nobody wants to say it, but if you’re [B]lack or brown, you’re more likely to end up on their radar” (18). Like most of the teenagers from Garden Heights, Bri is still haunted by the murder of a young Black man that rocked the neighborhood the year before. This is a reference to the events of The Hate U Give. Even though the school security guards aren’t actual cops, they still make Bri nervous, and she wonders if “seeing that cop get away with murder [...] made them think they’re invincible too” (69).
Bri walks through a metal detector and doesn’t trigger any alarms, but the security guards still pull her aside and demand to see her bag. When Bri refuses, she is thrown to the ground, and “before [she] knows[s] it, [her] chest hits the ground first, then [her] face is pressed against the cold floor” (70-71). Even though Bri has been in trouble before, she has never been physically assaulted like this, and coupled with her fear of the police in the wake of the shooting last year, she is terrified. Bri reminds the reader of her age when she says, “I want my mom. I want my dad. I wanna go home” (71) with her face pressed to the floor. She isn’t a drug dealer or a criminal; she is just a scared kid. The trauma of this incident fuels the fire of unrest at her school, especially when her song comes out depicting the incident.
When Bri tells her mother and her principal that the guards target students of color, the principal is quick to dismiss her claims. However, Jay points out that Trey told her the same thing when he attended Midtown. The principal insists that “the guards treat all of the students the same” (76) and instead shifts the blame to Bri, who has a track record of getting in trouble. However, the fact that Bri was routinely disciplined for minor infractions only proves Bri’s point. She tells her mother that she has gotten in trouble for things that white girls get away with, and Jay states that “girls like [Bri] are the only ones getting hits on their permanent record!” (81). This long-term bias has started to shape Bri’s perception of herself, and she starts to believe that “it doesn’t matter what [she] do[es],” because she’ll “still be whatever people think [she] [is]” (81).
Finding One’s Own Voice
Every parent has expectations for their children, and in Bri’s case, her entire community seems to have expectations for her. As the daughter of an underground hip-hop legend, Bri finds herself in the precarious position of trying to live up to her father’s fame while also finding her own voice. She complains that “people act like [she’s] [her] dad more than [she’s] [her]self. [She’s] got his dimples, his smile, his temper, his stubbornness, his rap skills [...]. But [she’s] not him” (455). Through Bri’s journey to self-discovery, Thomas explores the idea that making a name for oneself can be challenging when a person is constantly compared to others.
Bri is often compared to her father because she has a talent and a passion for rap like him. However, Bri was only four when her father was killed, so “he didn’t teach [her] to rap. [She] taught [her]self. So why does he get the credit?” (37-38). This doesn’t stop people from saying that she is continuing her father’s legacy and finishing what he started, and Bri spends most of the novel trying to get out from under her father’s shadow. Bri loved her father, but like any teenager, she wants to be her own person. Unbeknownst to her, she is more like her father than she could have imagined.
As Supreme starts to push Bri down the path of stardom, he encourages her to “play the role” of a stereotypical angry, gangbanging Black girl from the “ghetto,” and when Bri resists, Supreme tells her that her father did the same thing. He played a role, but lost himself in the role when he got caught up in real gang disputes. Bri sees the writing on the wall and knows that if she continues down this path, she might end up like her father, and this gives her the courage to bow out.
In addition to the people of Garden Heights comparing Bri to her father, her grandparents treat her like a surrogate daughter. Her Grandma is possessive of Bri, encouraging her to sit with her grandparents in church and asking Bri to come back and live with them. Granddaddy confesses that his wife “holds on to these kids ‘cause it’s like holding on to him” (337), meaning Bri’s father. When Lawless died, Granddaddy and Grandma lost their only child, and when Jay surrendered Bri and Trey to them immediately after, it was like they were getting a second chance to be parents. However, Bri’s grandparents have to come to terms with the fact that Trey and Bri are independent people, separate from their father’s memory. Loving them will not bring their son back, but it will honor his memory.
The Effects of Poverty
Like Thomas’s previous novel, On the Come Up takes place in Garden Heights: an impoverished, predominantly Black community in the inner city. Bri’s family, however, deals with a level of poverty that the protagonist of The Hate U Give does not. Thomas uses the Jackson family’s struggles to highlight the effects of cyclical poverty on youths.
At the novel’s start, money is tight in the Jackson household. Bri states that “[their] gas got cut off last week, and with no gas, [they] don’t have heat” (19) to brave the cold December mornings. Even with her mother working at the church and Trey working at the pizza shop, and even though Trey has a college degree and Jay is a college student, the family still falls behind on bills sometimes. Bri is used to this. She says that they simply “heat water in pots on the electric stove if we wanna take hot baths and we sleep with extra covers on our beds” (19-20). This has happened before, and Bri knows it will likely happen again. However, when Jay loses her job at the beginning of the novel, Bri knows that things will get a lot worse.
Jay tries to shield Bri from the severity of their financial situation, but Bri knows that her family is struggling. She says that in addition to not having gas to heat the house, “Last month, we got an eviction notice” (83), and their landlord soon comes banging on the door demanding rent. Bri watches as her mother is forced to choose between food and gas while struggling to find a job in a world that seems to have permanently labeled her as a junkie, even though she is eight years sober. Bri comments that poverty is like quicksand: “The harder we try to get out, the harder it is to get out” (175). Children in Bri’s situation may come to feel like they are a burden, and they might look for ways to help their family. In Bri’s case, her mom doesn’t want her to get a job, but Bri pursues rapping in hopes of helping to take care of her family and pay bills. She “can’t wait for the day [her family] [doesn’t] have to stretch or choose” (174) between food and electricity. Despite her mom’s best efforts, Bri carries the burden of her family’s finances, and she craves stability and comfort, not wealth and extravagance.
The Power of Words
Children are often told, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” but the reality is that the power of words has shaped most people. Thomas uses Bri’s passion for writing and rapping to show a duality to words: They can empower or destroy, and words must be used responsibly.
Bri is praised as an excellent rapper and poet by her friends, family, and teacher. When Bri gets in trouble, it is typically because she “say[s] stuff that [her] teachers don’t like” (77). She has opinions that are powerful enough to intimidate her teachers, who immediately want to silence her by sending her to the principal’s office. Bri’s words are powerful, even though she feels powerless.
Bri feels especially powerless when she is thrown to the ground by the school security guards. However, she takes back that power by writing her song and expressing her anger. Once again, Bri’s words are powerful, and during the school protest, she realizes that the crowd is chanting the lyrics to her song. She thinks about how “those words started in [her] head. [...] Conceived from [her] thoughts and feelings. Birthed through [her] pencil and onto [her] notepad. Somehow, they’ve found their way to [her] classmates’ tongues” (254). It is a moment of awe for Bri, and she realizes that her words hold more power than she thought.
When the riot breaks out at school, the words of Bri’s song are blamed, and the media argues that her “violent” lyrics encouraged acts of violence. Supreme tells Bri that this is nothing new: “Folks love to blame hip-hop. Guess that’s easier than looking at the real problems, you know?” (275). Words have power, and by trying to silence people like Bri, the media confirms that she is someone whose words frighten them.
In Bri’s final performance in the Ring, she uses words to set herself free. She raps about her journey to finding herself and her value, her determination to create her own path in life, and her declaration that she’s “not for sale” (476). Bri knows that words are synonymous with her identity, and if she performed a song that she didn’t write, she wouldn’t be herself on that stage. Instead, Bri chooses to celebrate the power of words and write her own life story.
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