Kemi, Brittany, and Muna only have one small interaction with all three of them on the page together. Why do you think the author chose for them not to interact more?

Kemi, Brittany, and Muna only have one small interaction with all three of them on the page together. Why do you think the author chose for them not to interact more?

I think that the author was trying to show that these women were treated pretty much the same, regardless of their "station" in Sweden. Racism, sexism are always present. In a way they were all "throw always" to the people around them.

I think the intersection of the three characters helped support the underlying theme of the need for connection or connectedness in our lives. For example, Muna saw in Kemi another woman of co!or whom she wanted to help but did not know how to reach out to make the connection

I think the author primarily focused on the three women individually, rather than together as a small group, in emphasizing the issues common to them all. I appreciated this aspect of the book and found the storylines very interesting and compelling. I really enjoyed how the characters intersected when least expected, and how not all of their encounters were necessarily positive but were nevertheless significant.

It underscores the similarity of their independent experiences by not having them interact. The reader appreciates how three very different women share common indignities of being Black in their spaces.

I think Melanieb says it very well.Eventhough they are different people, their being women of color/race means they are still outsiders and at the mercy of those who want them to remain that way or fail to see the need to help them to assimilate.

I never expected them to meet each other.

I saw this book was to show that Black women are not monolithic and that each Black women's experience is different.

This book is a portrait of a particular culture regarding prejudices and racial basis.

And yes, the storyline shows that all Black women despite of status, class, or education will experience this discrimination.

Beverly, I agree. If you are writing a play, for example you are told to tell ONE story. Deliver ONE message. The message is not about three women meeting, the message is about racial and sexual prejudice in one place. Each had a story but the theme was the connection to the message, not the possibility of characters connecting.

I think the author wanted to show their stories separately. There was no reason for them to be involved. They were all so different and the only thing they had in common was being black. I really wish Muna could have had her wish of becoming friends with Kemi.

If they had helped each other more, or changed each other's lives in some way, I think that would have made the book feel magical and unrealistic. Also, as has been said here and in some other threads, it's nonsensical to expect people to connect with each other purely over something like skin color, especially given how different the three women's backgrounds are.

I liked that they intersected just a little bit. Had they all become close, we wouldn't have understood the isolation and loneliness of each character.

I think that the women had to be written separately so that it could be shown that even though they were totally different people, with totally different means in live, that racism was alive and it had to do with the race and not a person's position in life.