The Skin I'm In

“‘Maleeka, your skin is pretty. Like a blue-black sky after it’s rained and rained,’ she says.”

When Miss Saunders compliments Maleeka, she draws from a poem using a simile. This simile contradicts the claims that Maleeka’s skin is ugly. As rain is commonly an image used to evoke gloominess, the simile also captures Maleeka’s internal struggle with bullying.

“Charlese, she’s crazylike. Next thing I know, she’s telling Miss Saunders to mind her own business. She says something about her face. Worm’s telling Char to cool it. He’s dragging her down the hall with his hand covering her big mouth.”

This passage characterizes Charlese as loud, disobedient, and stubborn. Just as Charlese resists Worm’s restraint, she resists Miss Saunders’s authority as well. Because Charlese insults her teacher’s face, this scene also characterizes her as shallow and cruel.

“Then John-John started singing his song. ‘Maleeka, Maleeka, we sure want to keep her but she so black, we just can’t see her.’”

This quote illustrates hyperbole, a literary device that uses exaggeration to describe something. In this example, Maleeka’s brown skin is described as purely black to emphasize and mock her darkness. Since song lyrics are a form of poetry, this may be the one instance in the novel where poetry is associated with shame and self-hatred.