112 pages • 3 hours read
Jesmyn WardThe Fire This Time
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2016A 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.
Before You Read 
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Summary
“The Tradition” by Jericho Brown
Introduction by Jesmyn Ward
“Homegoing, AD” by Kima Jones
“The Weight” by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
“Lonely in America” by Wendy S. Walters
“Where Do We Go from Here?” by Isabel Wilkerson
“‘The Dear Pledges of Our Love’: A Defense of Phillis Wheatley’s Husband” by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
“White Rage” by Carol Anderson
“Cracking the Code” by Jesmyn Ward
“Queries of Unrest” by Clint Smith
“Blacker Than Thou” by Kevin Young
“Da Art of Storytellin’ (a Prequel)” by Kiese Laymon
“Black and Blue” by Garnette Cadogan
“The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning” by Claudia Rankine
“Know Your Rights!” by Emily Raboteau
“Composite Pops” by Mitchell S. Jackson
“Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha Trethewey
“This Far: Notes on Love and Revolution” by Daniel José Older
“Message to My Daughters” by Edwidge Danticat
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
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“Theories of Time and Space” by Natasha TretheweyChapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Jubilee”
Poem Summary: “Theories of Time and Space”
Natasha Trethewey’s free-verse poem consists of ten couplets (stanzas that contain two poetic lines each). The speaker begins, “You can get there from here” (195) but warns that the journey will always take the reader to unfamiliar places. She sends the reader on the highway Mississippi 49, traveling south toward the Mississippi coast at Gulfport.
She describes this coastline and tells the speaker to walk the beach and bring a “tome of memory […]” (196). The reader will reach a dock and be photographed while waiting for a boat. After their boat trip, they will receive their photograph at the same dock.
Poem Analysis
Natasha Trethewey’s elusive poem speaks in the imperative, or second-person voice. In the second stanza, she writes, “Everywhere you go will be somewhere / you’ve never been. Try this […]” (195). The poem concerns the reader’s journey into the future, or possibly an alternate world, and takes a Mississippi highway to get there. The speaker, a guide figure, confidently assures the reader what to expect on her journey, from the mile markers to the shrimp boats to the vessel that will carry her across the water. The second-person voice, however, often masks a first-person experience, and this poem might also be understood as the speaker’s own journey in disguise.
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By Jesmyn Ward
