One of the novel's themes centers on hope and a resistance to follow social expectations. For example, after Cheryl and April run away from the DeRosier family, their social worker lectures them about the expected trend of life that April and Cheryl are going to travel because they are Metis girls: "'It starts out with the fighting, the running away, the lies. Next come the accusations that everyone in the world is against you . . . So you'll start with alcohol and drugs. From there, you get into shoplifting and prostitution and in and out of jails. You'll live with men who abuse you. And on it goes. You'll end up like your parents, living off society'" (48). After receiving this tirade from their social worker, it is important to consider Cheryl and April's reaction; they don't want to take this road that has been so explicitly explained to them. April tells Cheryl, "We are not going to become what they expect of us" (50). April and Cheryl reject this view because they are living for hope of a better future. It is not until they give up this hope that things become worse for them.
It is only after Cheryl gives up hope that her life begins to fall apart. Cheryl discovers that her mental picture of her father does not live of to reality. "The imagination of my childhood has played a horrible, rotten trick on me. All these years, until this very moment, I envisioned him as a tall, straight, handsome man . . . I had made something out of him that he wasn't, never was" (176). Cheryl discovers that her father is a drunk, not someone who was so sick that he was unable to take care of his children. Cheryl's hope for a functioning family has failed her. She expected to find that her father was not like the people she has been working with at the shelter. Cheryl's hope leaves her, and she begins to go down the path that was laid out for her when she was a child.
The desperate ending of Cheryl is, however, counteracted by the presence of April. Even after Cheryl commits suicide, Beatrice Culleton was able to end her novel with a sense of hope: April was finally able to come to terms with her identity and looks hopefully forward to a future with Cheryl's son: "Cheryl had died. But for Henry Liberty and me, there would be a tomorrow. And it would be better. I would strive for it. For my sister and her son. For my parents. For my people" (184).
I agree with you that ultimately this book is hopeful. I wonder, though, if Cheryl had known about her parents' condition earlier in life, if she would have survived in the end. I'm not sure she would have. I think finding out about her parents was the last straw, and if it hadn't been that, then there would have been a different last straw. Perhaps being so set in your identity that you can't change it is just as bad as not having an identity.
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