Trauma, Poverty, and Childhood Theme Analysis

Sixteen-year-old Bri's immediately family has been struggling financially for years. After Bri’s dad, Lawless, died before getting a record deal about twelve years before the novel's story begins, it became even more difficult for Bri's mom, Jay, to support her two small children. In the present, things haven't changed much: Jay loses her low-paying job as a church secretary right before Christmas; Bri's 22-year-old brother, Trey, does what he can to help by working at a local pizza joint; and the family often has to choose between food and utilities. Thomas suggests that experiencing an innocent childhood is a privilege that not everyone in present-day America gets—and that living in poverty traumatizes children and denies them that privilege.

Bri implies that her childhood ended abruptly when she was four years old, and her dad, local rap star Lawless, was shot and killed by a member of the Crowns gang. Things deteriorated quickly after this: Jay became addicted to crack and, unable to support her children, left Trey and Bri with Lawless's parents a year later. The experience of being left was, for Bri, even more traumatic than losing her dad. Even in the present, more than a decade later, Bri still experiences recurring nightmares of her mother leaving her—and after being left, she stopped referring to her mom as "Mom" and instead began calling her by her first name, Jay. Bri makes it very clear that because of this early childhood trauma, she doesn't feel comfortable truly trusting any of the adults in her life to care for her. As finances become even more dire in the novel's present, Bri fears that her grandparents will try to make her move back in with them, and she also secretly fears that Jay has begun using crack again. Aunt Pooh presents her own challenges for Bri, as Bri is uncomfortably aware that Aunt Pooh is financially comfortable only because she deals crack—one of the things that thrust Bri's family into poverty in the first place. All of this makes Bri feel isolated and as though she's a burden, as she's the only one in her immediate family who isn't contributing financially to the family.

The combination of distrusting the adults around her (the effects of trauma) and feeling like a burden (the effects of poverty) in turn causes Bri to believe that she has to take matters into her own hands to improve her family's financial situation. This financial pressure, combined with the lingering trauma of Bri's childhood, leads her to make a number of questionable decisions when producing her first song (“On the Come Up”) and subsequently attempting to get a record deal, which she believes is her only shot to pull Jay out of poverty. Things begin to spiral out of control when Pooh abandons Bri at the studio to write and record her first song alone. Without Pooh's mentorship, the song that Bri writes touches on dangerous and mature subjects that create more problems for Bri than they solve. The lyrics of her song offer a window into the ways in which Bri's maturity level is no match for her talent, at least when that talent goes unchecked. While everyone, Aunt Pooh and Jay included, agree that the song is well-written and will be an instant hit, they all take issue with the subject matter. Trey points out that Bri has no idea when she's talking about when she raps about "clips on her hips"—and Bri confirms this ignorance when she says that a clip is "the thingy that goes on the thingy on a gun." As far as the adults in Bri's life are concerned, the song's content is indicative of Bri's youth and immaturity.

Bri, however, initially sees "On the Come Up" as evidence of her growing maturity and of her entrance into the adult music world, even though she had to draw on her own trauma to get there. It's not until Bri hears young children rapping the most violent of her lyrics that she begins to see the wisdom of her mentors' hesitation. At this point, she finally sees that while rapping about her poverty and her involvement-by-proxy with gang activity may make for a good song, experiencing those very things is what put Bri in this financially desperate situation in the first place. She realizes, in short, that she doesn't want to make that violence, hunger, and fear that she grew up with something normal or attractive to other children by rapping about it like this—she realizes that doing so only perpetuates cycles of trauma and poverty that rob children of their innocence.

Luckily for Bri, Jay's decision to ask Grandma and Granddaddy for help means that going forward, Bri will have much less to worry about in terms of poverty. Grandma and Granddaddy are financially comfortable, generous, and desperate to help their grandchildren succeed, and moving in with them allows Bri to inhabit a space in which she can be more of a child, instead of grappling with adult worries of whether there will be food or electricity. In particular, the fact that the novel ends with Bri studying happily in her room for the ACT test (something indicative of her role as a college-bound high school student) suggests that Bri will have a good chance of breaking out of the cycle of poverty. Though the novel makes it clear that this happy turn of events is the exception, not the rule, this change in Bri's story offers a sobering reminder of all the things that poverty steals from children, as well as an example of the positive things that can happen when a child doesn't have to experience its traumas.