Jumped

Author: Rita Williams-Garcia
Original Date of Publication: 2009

Main Characters
Leticia:  A girl who serves as an observer to the beginnings of a fight that is supposed to take place later on.  She has the power to stop it, but chooses not to do anything about it.
Dominique:  A basketball player with severe anger issues who decides to jump someone after school because they invaded her space.
Trina:  The new girl in school who believes her existence brightens every one's day, and is oblivious to  the fact that everyone sees her as an irritant.

Setting:
The novel Jumped takes place in an inner city school.  It does not specifically state where the school is, but they talk about the Brooklyn Bridge, so it more than likely takes place in that area.  It is clear that there is security set up around the school.  You can see there are security guards at the school when Dominique is chasing her teacher and the security guard stops her and says she can not come into the school until a specific time.  As one reads the book, you notice this all takes place within one day. You get perspectives of how the day goes by the three main characters.  This leads up until the end of the day when Trina gets jumped.

Themes
Aggression is one of the main themes throughout Jumped.  We see this very strongly with Dominique.  There is a lot of aggression expressed by Dominique in the book that we cannot entirely attribute to one single source.  We know that she is angry because she receieved a low grade and was therefore benched by her basketball coach.  We also know that she was irritated by Trina in the hallway when Trina cut her way through Dominique and her friends.  Other than these two factors we are not sure where else Dominiques aggression is coming from.  It is possible that there are underlying issues outside of school causing her anger that we are not familiar with.

Self absorbency is another theme we see in Jumped.  We notice this in Trina from the start.  She comes off as very confident and obsessed with herself - from talking about her pink sweat suit to her middrift showing and her "shakey shake".  Leticia also exhibits some self-absorbent behavior.  When she is in gym class she talks about how she hates to sweat and as a result doesn't often participate in gym class as much as she should.  Also during gum class Leticia breaks one of her silk wrapped nails off.  Leticia takes this to the extreme by leaving gym class to confront the principal about her broken nail.  The rest of the day Leticia obsesses about her broken nail and attempts to hide it from the world.

Allusions

There are several allusions to other artists in this book. Trina mentions Picasso in her style of art. She uses many colors and loves it because she herself if of many backgrounds. As she analyzes her identity, her reference to Picasso reflects her desire to put the pieces of her identity together. Leticia talks about how her friend read ‘True-to-life reads’ like Push and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; that she cannot relate to, her teacher, Mr. Walsh’s favorites: Black Boy, The Stranger, and A Separate Peace. Although the books take place in different settings, there are connected to the three girls in Jumped. In Black Boy, Richard Write is a curious child who grows up in an environment of people who strongly dislikes him, like the state Trina is in with her school. Richard moves north to Chicago for a better life, like Trina has moved to her current school because of the great art program they have; and Richard thinks he will find friends the John Reed Club, like Trina thinks people love her for trying to join the Boosters. In The Stranger, Meursault is indifferent to the world because hall his life he has not been able to feel remorse of personal emotions. When Leticia finds out about how Trina is going to get hurt, she is indifferent and feels no remorse because she only care about the drama and the excitement it causes. Finally, in A Separate Peace, Gene causes Finny to fall of a tree and break is leg, out of anger and impulse, like Dominique’s decision to attack Trina.