Voice By: Kathleen

Voice: the way a writer or speaker uses words and tone to express ideas as well as his or her personas or personalities.

Ellie is first person in the novel, while Miah is third person. The transition throughout the chapters give us readers perspectives on each character. This style of writing lets each character really express their feelings toward each other and the issues involved with their family. Although Miah 's chapters are third person you still get that presence like he's talking to you and sharing his thoughts, just like Ellie. On page 5, the narrator for Miah tells us readers how Miah feels, being black, "He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn-where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood,". The narrator in this piece uses, "he felt...", thats what third person is. Ellie is presented at first as a lonely fifteen year-old girl who seeks a close relationship with her mother. She often mentions how she is the last sibling in her house and how she has no one to talk to. Her strained relationship with her mother Marion is due to the fact that her mother left twice when she was younger. This left Ellie broken almost like she couldn't trust her mother because she never knew when she would pick up and leave. "When you're young and your mother leaves, something inside of you fills up with the absence of her. I don't know how to explain. For a long time, there was this place inside me where love for Marion should have been but wasn't," page 22. In this excerpt, Ellie describes her basic feelings after her mother Marion left. Miah is also lonely but in a different sense. It is said that he has no siblings and that his parents divorced. His parents are famous, his mother for her novels, and his father for his movies. The way Miah is portrayed it tells how he wants companionship maybe just a friend, (not like his "homeboys") to talk to about his problems with his parents. His relationship with his mother is genuine, and simple. His father seems to be more focused on making films and letting Miah meet people from his work. These two end up being close because of their problems. They did say that it was love at first sight.


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
- Desribe Ellie's relationship with her father and Miah's relationship with his father. Compare and contrast.

- Why do you think Miah was put as third- person and Ellie was put as first-person?