55 pages • 1 hour read
Ibi ZoboiMy Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman is going into seventh grade. She’s from Huntsville, Alabama, where she lives with Momma (her mom) and Granddaddy (her mom’s father—her grandpa). Still, she’s on an airplane to New York City—or, as she calls it, “No Joke City”—to spend a week with her dad.
Ebony-Grace has a robust imagination—Grandaddy calls it “imagination location”—and she pretends she’s a space officer (Space Cadet E-Grace Starfleet) saving Captain Fleet (a reference to the Star Trek franchise, which began as a 1960s TV show) while on the Mothership Uhura (Uhura is the name of the Black communications officer, played by Nichelle Nichols, on Star Trek, and it means “freedom”).
Captain Fleet is heroic, so the Sonic King and his wicked “minions,” the Funkazoids, harass him throughout Planet Boom Box. The names and places come from Granddaddy’s stories. Momma wants her dad to stop filling her daughter’s head with comic books and “crazy” science fiction tales. They’re not helpful for someone about to start middle school.
A flight attendant asks Ebony-Grace if she’s feeling okay, and she’s not: She throws up Momma’s breakfast in a barf bag. Looking out the window, she sees New York City. It’s June 1984, so she sees the Twin Towers and other landmarks. She wonders where John Lennon got shot and thinks about how the news portrays New York City as dangerous. Momma tells Ebony-Grace’s dad, Julius, to keep her away from slick men and “street urchins.”
Chapter 2 Summary
Another flight attendant waits with Ebony-Grace at the luggage carousel. She gets her two blue bags before seizing the chance to ride on the carousel and rescue Captain Fleet. An officer pulls her off the carousel, and the flight attendant admonishes her. Ebony-Grace thinks of her as an “alien” who’s handing her over to the leader of Planet No Joke City (New York City), King Sirius Julius (her dad).
Ebony-Grace spots her dad and his thick mustache and stained coveralls. Julius makes the flight attendant suspicious, and she speaks about him like a “kidnapper.” Once she realizes he’s Ebony-Grace’s dad, she’s friendly. She tells Julius she hopes he liked flying with American Airlines and offers Ebony-Grace a pin. Julius calls Ebony-Grace his “little broomstick.”
Chapter 3 Summary
Ebony-Grace calls her dad Daddy, and she compares Daddy’s dilapidated Buick to Granddaddy’s elegant Cadillac. She spots a train and wonders if it’s “the Soul Train.” Her dad laughs: It could be the “Soul Train”—it’s the Metro-North train, which stops at Harlem. Ebony-Grace wants to go on the “Soul Train” and meet Don Cornelius, the creator and host of Soul Train—a TV show that debuted in 1971 and featured performances by rap, R&B, and soul artists. Daddy can’t think of a reason for them not to go on Soul Train, but Ebony-Grace will have to dance, and Ebony-Grace doesn’t want to do that.
As they reach Harlem—the neighborhood in New York City where Daddy lives—Ebony-Grace notices the crowded streets and fast-walkers. She observes a boy (Pigeon-Chest Boy) playing in a fire hydrant, but she calls the fire hydrant a “small robot.” Daddy says Ebony-Grace can play in the fire hydrant, but Ebony-Grace thinks the fire hydrant is a “trap.”
An unhoused person, Lester, tries to help Daddy with Ebony-Grace’s luggage, but Daddy scolds him: He’ll have something for him later. Lester retreats and bows to Daddy like he’s a “king.”
Ebony-Grace looks down at the grass jutting out of the concrete cracks as kids swarm her and shout questions: What’s her name? What’s up with her glasses? Why is her skin so dark? What’s wrong with her? The barrage triggers her, and she screams for Granddaddy to beam her up and bring her back to Alabama.
Chapter 4 Summary
Daddy tells the kids to give Ebony-Grace some room, and Ebony-Grace calls them “nefarious minions,” but she likes one of the kids, Bianca Perez, who yells at the kids and invites Ebony-Grace to play in the fire hydrant, jump double-Dutch, or watch a boy, Calvin, breakdance. Ebony-Grace turns down the offers. She’s worried about the Sonic King and the Funkazoids. They sent the Sonic Boom—sound waves to control people’s minds.
Daddy calls Momma (Gloria Norfleet): He’ll sign her up for classes at the Y, he has a girl, Diane, who can babysit her while he’s at his car shop, and he contests Momma’s “street urchins” label—they’re good kids. Ebony-Grace speaks to Momma and promises to stay away from Daddy’s “dirty” shop. Ebony-Grace asks to speak to Granddaddy, but Momma keeps talking to her in a sweet but stern voice.
Chapter 5 Summary
Daddy prepares food for Ebony-Grace and Bianca. She expects a lavish meal like the kind Momma makes for Granddaddy when he returns from an engineering conference. Instead, she gets a ham and cheese sandwich and milk. Bianca eats her sandwich, but Ebony-Grace pulls out the ham and cheese and just eats the Wonder Bread. Bianca says Abuela (her grandma) would hit her for wasting food.
Ebony-Grace has known Bianca since she was five. When she was four, her parents divorced, and Daddy returned to Harlem to start his auto repair shop and junkyard. A year later, Momma and Ebony-Grace visited Daddy for the summer, and Ebony-Grace met Bianca while she was taking apart another telephone. She called Bianca “Bianca Pluto” and made her Uhura’s first officer. After the summer, Ebony-Grace and Momma went home to Huntsville. Momma didn’t like the Harlem schools and streets.
Ebony-Grace tells Bianca that Funkazoids drove her to No Joke City, where she’s King Sirius Julius’s prisoner. She needs Bianca’s help to find the Uhura and save Captain Fleet, but Bianca wants to go in the fire hydrant and then jump rope. Ebony-Grace notices Bianca’s tight, colorful clothes, and she makes a mental note to lend her some of her clothes: She has NASA, Superman, Star Wars, and E.T. t-shirts.
The girls agree to go to Daddy’s junkyard to build another rocket ship. After saying hi to Albert, the shop’s guard dog, they get the supplies from a former grocery store refrigerator. As Ebony-Grace hums the Star Trek music, they launch soda bottles into the air.
Chapter 6 Summary
Daddy’s shop sign is fading: It should read FREEMAN’S AUTO REPAIR—instead, the sign says MAN’S AU PAIR. Maybe someone should call the Ghostbusters to find the missing letters.
The above-ground train noisily passes through. Ebony-Grace calls it the “Soul Train” and the “Sonic Boom.” She and Bianca squabble about the train, and Ebony-Grace notices kids playing on dirty mattresses.
A group of girls (“nefarious minions”) in short shorts and tight colorful t-shirts arrives. They scowl at Ebony-Grace’s lace socks, pleated skirt, and Mary Janes. The leader wears a Rainbow Brite (an animated TV show airing from 1984-86) t-shirt, so Ebony-Grace dubs her Rainbow Dull. Rainbow Dull calls Ebony-Grace and Bianca “Ebony and Ivory“––the name of a Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney anti-racist song from 1982.
Rainbow Dull asks about PJ. Bianca says PJ isn’t her boyfriend. The girls then make fun of Ebony-Grace, and she pretends she’s Wonder Woman and combats their insults with Bracelets of Submission. Bianca begs her to stop, but she doesn’t, so Bianca gives her the $5 Daddy gave her to be Ebony-Grace’s friend before leaving with the girls.
Chapter 7 Summary
Daddy’s brownstone has four floors, but it’s not as big and elegant as Granddaddy’s house, and Daddy lets Bianca and her grandma live on the ground floor. On the first floor, Ebony-Grace notices album covers, and they confirm her belief that Daddy has alliances with races from other galaxies. In the living room, he has a tiny TV on top of a large TV, and the arrangement reminds her of R2-D2, the mini robot from Star Wars.
As she looks for a way to send a message to Granddaddy through R2-D2, Uncle Richard, Daddy’s younger brother, arrives and asks her why she’s inside on a June day. Ebony-Grace says the kids are “strange.” Uncle Richard says his niece should call him Uncle Rich. Maybe the word “rich” will “manifest” and make him rich.
Ebony-Grace asks Uncle Rich if he has a VCR—she wants to watch Star Trek. Uncle Rich says there’s no VCR in the house, but if she asks Daddy, he could ask Lester, who could get him a stolen VCR. Instead of Star Trek, she watches the news, and the anchorwoman, Sue Simmons, reports on the horrors in New York City.
Chapter 8 Summary
Ebony-Grace tries to call Grandaddy, but Momma answers, so she hangs up and watches World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, where Jennings highlights the horrors in the world. As the sun sets and Diff’rent Strokes (1978-1986), a sitcom set in New York City, begins, Ebony-Grace goes to the bedroom Daddy keeps for her. The windows are open, and the city noise turns her into a “scaredy cat.” She gets ready for bed, and Daddy asks her if everything’s okay in Alabama—she doesn’t need to keep secrets. Ebony-Grace brings up the Uhura, and Daddy dismisses Granddaddy’s “crazy stories.” He also tells Ebony-Grace to keep away from Lester and Uncle Rich.
Ebony-Grace asks Daddy why he gave Bianca $5 to be her friend. Daddy didn’t—he gave her $5 for them to buy candy. He thinks Ebony-Grace can make friends in Harlem without money. Her family members are from Harlem: It’s in her blood.
Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The theme of Imagination Versus Reality manifests immediately with Ebony-Grace turning the airplane into a spaceship. Ebony-Grace says, “I press button after button as the plane blasts through the concrete sky and becomes the Mothership Uhura” (9). These musings are contrasted with the reality of the plane ride, where she vomits in the sick bag and ponders John Lennon’s death as she views the New York skyline. Ebony-Grace imposes her imagination on her surroundings, causing conflict with people who want her to have a more pragmatic relationship with reality. Momma tells Granddaddy, “[S]top filling her head with crazy stories” (10). Daddy laments, “All these crazy stories about spaceships and planets with Jerry [Grandaddy]” (50). Bianca quips, “I’m gonna need at least twenty bucks just to put up with all this loca” (47). Ebony-Grace’s vigorous imagination turns friends and family into antagonists. Anyone trying to pull her from her outer space narrative isn’t an ally. As Granddaddy is the source of the stories and encourages her interest in space, he’s her top ally. Her imagination reflects their sharp bond as she tries to save his character, Captain Fleet.
Imagination Versus Reality links to a second key theme, Self-Expression and Identity Creation. Through the outer space narrative, Ebony-Grace creates an identity and expresses herself: She conveys her love for space and science fiction. She adds to her identity creation and self-expression through her style and consumption. She wears clothes that relate to space or superheroes, and she’s infatuated with Star Trek—devoutly reading the Star Trek comic books and watching the Star Trek movies. She desires to be in the Star Trek universe, so she adds an imaginary overlay to the real world, renaming people and assigning them roles in her preferred universe.
Self-expression and identity creation apply to the other characters, with the girls of Nine Flavas creating their identities and expression through double-Dutch and their clothes. Ebony-Grace describes Bianca’s friends as “girls wearing short-shorts, too small and too colorful T-shirts, and each one holding onto a long white telephone cord” (45). Ebony-Grace doesn’t like the way they express themselves, and she doesn’t want to merge her identity with theirs. She combats them by asserting her identity and pretending to be Wonder Woman.
The culture and belonging motif supports imagination versus reality and self-expression and identity creation. Ebony-Grace doesn’t want to belong to Harlem and engage with its culture, so she turns it into hostile territory, turning it into “Planet No Joke City” and assigning Daddy the role of “the imperious King Sirius Julius” (16). The motif also supports the theme of Growth and Acceptance. Ebony-Grace must learn to manage her imagination, adapt to different environments, and get along with people who like things besides space and superheroes.
To highlight Ebony-Grace’s tireless commitment to her imagination, Zoboi uses the literary device of diction––meaning, the words Ebony-Grace uses to show off her robust commitment to Granddaddy’s narrative. When she hears loud music in Harlem, she notes, “The Sonic Boom, sent by the Sonic King and the Funkazoids from Planet Boom Box!” (27). The vocabulary is fantastical, and “Bianca rolls her eyes and sighs” (28) at it. The reader might also feel exasperated or confused by Ebony-Grace’s extravagant diction.
Another literary device Zoboi uses is juxtaposition. She places things, places, and people side by side so the reader can examine the differences and similarities. She juxtaposes the tranquility of Alabama with the tumult of New York City. Momma tells her daughter to stay away from “those crazy Harlem streets with those little street urchins” (31). Zoboi also juxtaposes Ebony-Grace with the Nine Flavas when she spotlights the difference in their styles and diction. Dialogue, another literary device, adds to the juxtaposition. The way the characters speak to each other highlights their varying interests and priorities.
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