Betty Before X

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2018

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Nature of Love

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-Black racism. It depicts scenes of racial discrimination and racist violence.

Love, the withholding of love, or the inability to express love, is a thematically influential piece of Betty Before X. As Betty counts her blessings each night, she gives an insightful, poignant illustration of how many manifestations of love there are.

Shortly after Matilda takes Betty from Ollie Mae, she suddenly feels loved. The same thing happens with her aunt, Fannie Mae, and Betty wonders “how she got so good at loving” (4). When Fannie Mae dies, it’s clear that she and Matilda were Betty’s only concepts of love: “In just one day, I learned how love can disappear in an instant, like how if you blink you can miss the setting sun” (7).

On the other hand, Ollie Mae is harsher with Betty than with her other siblings. Early in the novel, Betty reveals that each night, she wonders what she can do to make Ollie Mae love her. When she moves in with Mrs. Malloy, Betty gets a new chance to consider the nature and variety of love. Mrs. Malloy “knows how to love, how to look at you in a crowd like you’re the only person she sees” (23). This makes it more comfortable for Betty to consider Mrs. Malloy her real mother. As the book traces Betty’s life through her early adulthood, the impact of Mrs. Malloy’s love for Betty is evident: it is through Mrs. Malloy’s love that Betty acquires many of the same qualities, such as her compassion for other people and her commitment to the betterment of her community.

However, Ollie Mae does love Betty, she just can’t express it easily. When she calls Betty on her birthday, she obviously wants to be more affectionate with her daughter. Instead, she settles on commenting on her hoarse throat and recommending a tea for Betty, an easy gesture from a mother to a daughter whose throat needs to be soothed. One night, Betty thanks God for “bringing someone into my life to love me when Ollie Mae’s love isn’t enough” (95). The book suggests that, as with Mrs. Malloy, here, too, love shapes Betty’s character. It is through her relationship with Ollie Mae that Betty learns to persevere in loving others, even in times when it feels in vain.

Betty’s nightly counting of blessings provides the greatest example of how varied love can be: “Love is talking to your sister on the phone and running out of words to say but staying on the line anyway. Love is not letting a friend stop being your friend for no good reason at all. Love is family being who you choose and who chooses you” (130).

Over the course of the story, Betty receives the love of Mrs. Malloy, she reconciles with Ollie Mae’s limited ability to express her love, she deems herself worthy of love, and she also falls in love with the struggle for Civil Rights. By the time the story ends, Betty has chosen the people she loves, and they all love her as well. On a larger scale with greater import, Betty also learns to love the struggle for Civil Rights, because she loves people and wants equality for everyone.

Racial Discrimination and Resilience

Betty’s most devastating encounter with racism occurs early in the story, and early in her childhood. While walking home, she sees the bodies of two lynched people: “The tree had two bodies—a man’s and a woman’s—dangling from the branches like too-heavy Christmas ornaments” (5). She doesn’t yet understand the complexity of racism in 1940s America, but she knows that they were killed because they have the same complexion as she.

The lynching is the novel’s most extreme example of racism and its ultimate potential. Betty will experience racism at the department store and at Jerry’s Market, but none of these events have the gravity of the lynching. However, Betty glimpses the larger implications for society when she sees the newspaper headline: “Race Riots Kill More Than 20, Injure 700” (67).

Mrs. Peck, Mrs. Malloy, and the Housewives’ League give Betty an early example of non-violent protest and show her that there is no fighting against racial discrimination without resilience. After joining the Housewives’ League, the energy galvanizes Betty, but it also tests her resilience. She finds the rhetoric of Mrs. Peck and Mrs. Malloy so persuasive and irresistible that she believes everyone else will share her perspective once they hear it. However, not even Phyllis gets on board with their mission.

When Betty is confronted by the reality of glacial progress—if any—at Jerry’s Market, Betty briefly grows disillusioned. She is forced to admit that change is often a life’s work and that certain types of progress may be started by one generation but require the next to see real change. Betty temporarily questions the usefulness of their efforts. Nothing seems to change, and Mrs. Malloy’s insistence that the struggle is worth the effort doesn’t satisfy Betty.

However, when she hears Kay’s analogy about the garden and the seeds, their work makes more sense. Sometimes seeds need years to blossom, and just because a drought kills the crops doesn’t mean that ceasing to plant is an option or a solution. That racial discrimination persists despite all of Betty’s efforts and those of her community does not mean that their labor for racial justice is not necessary. In addition to serving as a metaphor for the struggle for racial justice and equality, this analogy also symbolizes Betty’s own personal growth as a leader in the fight against racial discrimination over the course of the book. She is like the seed that is watered and tended by the people who love and support her and the fruit of this labor is not fully ripe for years to come: Betty eventually becomes Betty Shabazz, a woman whose commitment to Civil Rights and growing resiliency would be part of her identity for her entire life.

Personal Growth and Identity

Teenage years are a period of uncertainty for many people. For Betty, this is a time in her life when her identity is unsettled and porous. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Betty experiences periods of intense love and kindness in between her time with Ollie Mae.

After her grandmother died, Betty lived with her aunt, Fannie Mae, who helped shape her early identity:

I don’t know how she got so good at loving. How she thought to tell me every day that I was her sweet brown sugar. How she knew just how to take my hand in the heart of her palm, holding me tight like she would never let me go (4).

Matilda and Fannie Mae showed Betty that she was worth loving, and the nurturing she receives from them helps Betty in her personal growth and sense of identity; through them, Betty feels a grounded sense of self.

By contrast, Betty’s relationship to Ollie Mae often stunts her personal growth and distorts her identity. Each night with Fannie Mae, Betty’s questions to herself reveal her uncertainties and self-image: “What did I do to make my momma leave me?” and “What can I do to make her love me?” (7). Betty makes it clear that she thinks Ollie Mae’s departure, and her lack of love, are Betty’s fault.

Her identity becomes that of someone whose mother abandons her, then lets her go again after taking her back, all while treating her other siblings with more love. The text also strongly suggests that Ollie Mae abused Betty when she was an infant, and she whips her with a switch when Betty is older. These events cause Betty to falter in her personal growth and sense of self, because they breed feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt. Hence, by illustrating the consequences of Betty’s relational struggles, the book shows how personal growth is linked to nurturing connects and relational support.

The text also explores the impact of racism on Betty’s sense of identity. Betty’s sense of self is complicated by the fact that she has a different complexion than her siblings. Teachers, adults, and people at church claim that she should be proud of who she is, but she is also subjected to expensive advertisements in glamorous magazines that tell her she should bleach her skin so that it is not “dreadful” (45).

When Betty moves in with the Malloys, she finally has someone who treats her like an actual mother, so Betty is finally able to think of herself as a daughter. Just as the book showed how Betty’s relationship with her mother negatively impacted her personal growth and identity, the book also illustrates the impact of a positive relationship with Mrs. Malloy. With Mrs. Malloy’s nurturing, Betty is able to develop a more secure sense of self and grow towards the person she wants to become, rather than running away from the person she is. Having two mothers—one biological, one fulfilling the maternal role—forces Betty to think about herself, her growth, and her identity. One night she lies in bed “mouthing the word Mother over and over” (157).

Betty’s inclusion in a group is also a galvanizing factor in her self-image. When she joins the Housewives’ League, she assumes their mission as part of her identity. With struggle comes accomplishment, and by the end of the novel, Betty is more at peace with herself than previously. Like the seeds in Kay’s farm analogy, Betty grows with love and because of hardships.

Betty’s self-acceptance is most evident when she realizes she no longer wants to change her appearance. She tells Suesetta,

I think God made us the way He wanted us to be. I think maybe we make Him sad when we don’t like how He made us, like we’re telling Him that what He created was wrong (176).

From that moment, she views personal growth and the cultivation of her identity as ways to honor God, who made her exactly who she was supposed to be.