Friday Black

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

“Things My Mother Said”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Things My Mother Said” Summary

The unnamed narrator’s mother frequently reminds him how lucky he is to have her since she herself grew up without a mother. The narrator and the mother live in a house that gradually loses access to utilities, which makes it difficult for the narrator to study.

One day, the hungry narrator comes home from school and smells freshly cooked chicken and rice. When he asks his mother where it came from, she refuses to answer, preferring to read her Bible instead. After he eats the food, he once again asks his mother how she made it without gas or electricity. She instead asks if the narrator has recited his psalms and blessed the food.

When the narrator discovers charred grass in the backyard, he feels a mix of pride and shame. He acknowledges how lucky he is, affirming his mother’s sayings.

“Things My Mother Said” Analysis

“Things My Mother Said” is a piece of flash fiction that uses the relationship between an unnamed narrator and his mother to depict The Transformative Power of Magical Thinking. To convey the story in a narrow narrative space, Adjei-Brenyah relies on figurative language and imagery to vividly render the circumstances in which the narrator and his mother live.

In contrast to the language that dominates the rest of the story, the exposition of the characters’ situation is delivered coldly—their home “lost all its life: gas, water, electric” (27). This is immediately followed by the narrator’s discovery of the warm meal. Almost immediately, the language of the story becomes highly evocative, turning the fridge into “a casket bearing nothing” and the sunlight into “wide sheets… [that] pressed through the window and draped [his mother]” (27). Through this imagery, Adjei-Brenyah suggests that the food is almost mystical and responsible for the revival of their home. In contrast to the narrator’s cold hunger through most of the story, this inexplicable source of life transforms the world.

The narrator’s mother is content with a lack of explanation. Whenever her son asks her where the food came from, she either fails to answer or reminds him to pray. The latter implies that the food is a miracle to be grateful for, which reflects her perspective of life, as evidenced in her favorite sayings. Though few details are given about her life, her upbringing without a mother hints at a desire to raise her son differently, nurturing him in a way that she was not. This desire is reinforced by the revelation about the food’s origin: The mother cooked it on the grass in the backyard, showing determination and care that even shut-off utilities can’t diminish. Nonetheless, she is reticent when questioned by her son, not wanting to let the real answer define their relationship. It is appropriate, then, that the narrator ends the story by reaffirming his mother’s sayings, particularly that he is lucky, signaling that he understands her intentions.