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Summary
Chapter Thirty-Three
Bri, Trey, and Jay go to church. Bri’s family sees her flirting with Curtis, who asks her out on another date, and they tease her about it. They meet up with Grandma and Granddaddy, who invite everyone over for family dinner. Bri is alarmed that her mom and grandma aren’t fighting and thinks something must be wrong. At her grandparents’ house, everyone continues to be kind to each other, and Jay tells Bri and Trey that they are all moving into her grandparents’ house so that Jay can save some money. They have a heart-to-heart conversation, and Bri starts calling Jay “Mom” again. For the rest of the novel, Bri refers to Jay as “Mom.”
Jay encourages Trey to follow his dream of going to graduate school. Bri is happy for him but hurt that her mother is encouraging Trey’s dreams and not her dream of becoming a rapper. When Trey brings this up, their mom gives Bri permission to perform in the Ring, as long as she behaves herself. She also says that Bri has to fire Supreme as her manager. As they all sit down to dinner, Bri reflects that she has some of the characteristics of all her family members. She wonders if she could also be like Kayla, Trey’s girlfriend, a rapper who has found success independent of record labels and managers.
Chapter Thirty-Four
At the Ring, the Crowns threaten Bri, saying that her Aunt Pooh injured a Crown when she was getting revenge. Bri is scared but manages to get in the Ring without getting hurt. She realizes she can’t let the Crowns stop her the way they stopped her father. While Bri is waiting to perform, Scrap hands her his phone. Aunt Pooh, who is still in jail, is on the line. Aunt Pooh tells Bri to go onstage and kill it. She also says that she may not serve that much time in jail.
When Bri gets in the Ring, one of the Crown gang members flashes her father’s chain at her, taunting her. Silently, Scrap offers to “take care” of him, but Bri doesn’t give him the signal. She’s supposed to perform the song that Dee-Nice wrote for her, the song she hates. But when the music starts to play, she changes her mind and tells DJ Hype to kill the music. Instead, she does a freestyle rap without a beat. She raps about refusing to be what people think she should be, about being true to herself. The record exec and Supreme are furious that Bri has defied them. They both leave, but the crowd goes wild. Bri feels like she’s doing what she was made to do.
Epilogue
Later, as Bri and Curtis study for the ACT at her grandparents’ house, Sonny and Miles call Bri to tell her she needs to get on Twitter. She sees that her notifications have blown up and that a celebrity has retweeted her freestyle from the Ring. The celebrity, who remains unnamed in the novel, calls Bri the “future of hip-hop” and invites her to collaborate on a song. Curtis calls it a life-changing tweet and her mother asks if she wants to do the collaboration. Bri says she does, as long as she can do it on her own terms.
Analysis
In the novel’s final chapters, Bri rediscovers her true voice by returning to her family and repairing her relationships with those who love her most. Throughout the novel, Bri has felt the pressure to “make it” as a rapper to help lift her family out of poverty, yet she hides her rapping from Jay and Trey because she knows they would not approve of the persona she projects in her music. Bri especially mistrusts her mother due to her traumatic memories of abandonment and Jay’s current inability to provide for the family. After Jay and Bri have a heart-to-heart about how much their past has affected their present, Bri finally realizes that Jay understands the trauma she has caused Bri, and how much that weighs on Jay as well. This creates an opening where Bri truly lets her mother in, as signified by her calling her “Mom” instead of Jay. Jay’s decision to reconcile with Grandaddy and Grandma also shows Bri that Jay is committed to providing Trey and Bri with stability and security, even if it means sacrificing her pride. With the family reunited, Bri looks around at each of her family members and begins to see little pieces of herself in all of them. This signals that she is beginning to move past her insecurities and reconnect with who she is and where she came from. When Trey convinces Jay that Bri should be allowed to pursue her rap career, it shows Bri that she has her family’s trust and support despite the mistakes she has made.
Bri’s final rap in the Ring delivers a powerful denunciation of the likes of Supreme, DJ Hype, and James, as she takes back the power to speak her own truth to her audience. Rejecting the demand that she perform the ghostwritten song, Bri asks the audience if she can freestyle from the heart instead—which, it turns out, they greatly prefer. Bri’s opening lines send a clear message to Supreme and the white record executive that she will no longer allow them to control her image. In Bri’s words, she refuses to be a sellout, a puppet, a pet, or a clone. She then shifts to statements about who she really is: “I’m somebody’s daughter, I’m somebody’s sister, I’m somebody’s hope, and I’m somebody’s mirror.” These lines ground Bri’s identity in her family and assert that her talent as a rapper gives her the power to inspire others. Bri repudiates Supreme’s self-serving argument that the only way to succeed is to conform to the racist ideas of the people who hold the purse strings. Bri seems to be speaking directly to Supreme when she says, “Here’s the kicker, they get richer, only if we take that picture.” Although Supreme and James storm out of the ring, the crowd’s “explosion of cheers” signifies their approval of Bri’s message: that speaking one’s truth is the only way to overcome the racist stereotypes that try to rob us of who we are.
The epilogue show’s that Bri’s decision to buck Supreme in the Ring was the right one. She is back where she began at the beginning of the novel, studying for the ACT. But this time the distraction is Curtis—someone who understands her—rather than the exploitative DJ Hype. She is also back with her family: Jay, Trey, and her grandparents, all under one roof and getting along. Jay has landed the job at the superintendent’s office, reestablishing her trust with Bri and reclaiming her role as her mother. Bri has started calling Jay “Mom” again and is no longer hiding everything from her. When Sonny calls to tell Bri that somebody famous posted Bri’s freestyle on Twitter, Jay is right there looking over Bri’s shoulder, sharing the moment that could be her big break. At home with those she loves, Bri finally knows who she is. And this time, when presented with a shot at fame, she knows enough to accept only on her own terms.
