49 pages • 1 hour read
Long Division
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 1-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “One Sentence.”
Content Warning: The source text deals with issues including racism, anti-gay bias, antisemitism, the loss of a child, and domestic abuse. The source text also includes racial slurs, which are censored throughout this guide.
Fourteen-year-old Citoyen, or “City,” Coldson is rivals with his classmate LaVander Peeler at Fannie Lou Hamer Magnet School. Both City and LaVander are Black, but LaVander bullies City for being (he claims) “white, homeless, [and] homosexual” (3). Both boys are also competing in the 2013 Can You Use That Word in a Sentence contest, which started in 2006 and is coming to Mississippi for the first time. Contest participants are given words they must use in “dynamic” sentences.
City and LaVander tie in the state competition. The next day, everyone gathers around the rivals during lunch to listen to them battle with sentences. They throw insults at each other, trying to prove who’s better. City knows LaVander’s sentences are good but doubts he knows what they mean. City focuses on staying mentally strong during their battles, like his grandmother (“Grandma”) and uncle (“Uncle Relle”) taught him. Grandma lives in Melahatchie, and Uncle Relle stays with her a few nights a week. City brushes his hair while battling LaVander. When the bell rings, LaVander throws one more insult at City before going to class.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “All Clean.”
Principal Lara Reeves calls City into her office after LaVander falsely reports him for calling him a racial slur. City hopes she will go easy on him because she took a class with his mother at Madison Community College. However, Principal Reeves gives City a true-or-false test full of abstract claims about love, history, identity, etc.; City must complete it by the end of the year as punishment. A bonus at the end asks City to write three stories in three different eras. Principal Reeves addresses City’s behavior and the way it reflects on all Black people. City gets distracted when he notices a book titled Long Division on the principal’s shelf. He keeps glancing at it, trying to see the author’s name while Principal Reeves talks. He convinces her to let him borrow it at the end of the meeting.
After school, LaVander’s father picks up LaVander and City to drive them to the Coliseum for the sentence contest.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Chitlin City.”
LaVander’s father quizzes LaVander during the ride to the contest. City notices how differently LaVander acts around his father, who tells LaVander and City to focus because the contest is “bigger” than the boys. City takes his brush and copy of Long Division into the Coliseum. He’s been reading on the way and can’t decide what’s “wrong” with the book: The way it’s written is different from any book City has read, and there’s a character with his name in it. There’s also a character called Baize Shephard, which is the name of a girl who lives near Grandma and recently went missing.
A woman named Cindy leads the boys into their dressing room. She informs City that he can’t bring his brush on stage. City gets upset, and LaVander warns him about ruining everything for them, as he’s set on winning the competition. The boys get into an argument during which LaVander implies that City does not deserve to be there, noting that during the preliminary competitions, the judges always gave City “Black words.” City doesn’t understand and is tired of hearing LaVander talk about proving himself to be an “exceptional African American” (34). Finally, Cindy tells City he can bring his brush after all and leads the boys toward the stage. City notices LaVander’s eyes watering and teases him about it. LaVander doesn’t laugh.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “Words, Word, Work.”
The judges welcome the contestants on stage. City and LaVander are the only Black contestants and are joined by two Mexican American contestants as well as several white children. LaVander goes first and acts tense when he gives his sentence and returns to his seat. City goes next and is given the word “niggardly” to use in a sentence (this word has different linguistic roots than the N-word, though the judges’ giving the word to City is deliberate). City struggles with the word, and the judges tell him he’s used it wrong. City gets upset and refuses to leave the stage, criticizing the contest, Mississippi, President Obama, white people, and the Mexican American girl sitting near him.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Click That.”
City walks home alone, thinking about everyone who saw the contest on television. He guesses Grandma will be embarrassed and his mother (“Mama”) will be angry. He expects Mama to beat him for his behavior. As he waits for her to come home, City reads his book and writes a few lines inside the book’s blank pages. Then he turns on the television and watches the rest of the competition. LaVander’s last word is “chitterlings,” and he uses it correctly and wins. However, LaVander keeps talking after the celebratory balloons fall. The judges decide that he hasn’t won, and a white boy from New Orleans takes the prize. City turns off the television, realizing he can’t hate LaVander anymore and actually might love him. He doesn’t understand what this means but knows how he feels. When Mama comes home, she doesn’t punish City. Instead, she puts him on a bus to Melahatchie to see Grandma for a few days.
On the way, City talks to two girls who recognize him from television. They admire his brush and ask to hear some of his sentences. Then three white boys tell City to say something for their YouTube video. City feels “gross” afterward, and the girls stop talking to him.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Thicccc Parts.”
Grandma meets City at the bus station. City always feels different when he goes to Melahatchie. In the car, City waits for Grandma to scold him for what happened, but she doesn’t. They drive to Walmart, and Grandma warns City to leave his brush in the car so it doesn’t get stolen. Inside, a white woman tells Grandma about a sale on wigs. Grandma pretends like the woman has given her useful information even though she already knew about the sale.
Back in the car, Grandma tells City his stint on television would have made his grandfather, Tom Henry, proud. She launches into a story about her late husband. Afterward, City asks why Grandma acted the way she did around the white lady in Walmart, but Grandma doesn’t give him a straight answer.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “That Wireless.”
Grandma’s house looks different. Hurricane Katrina destroyed it eight years prior, and she has since built a new structure in the same location. The house is a small shotgun house without a hallway. All the rooms are connected. City wants to go online to see the videos of himself, but Grandma doesn’t have internet, and he doesn’t feel like going into town to visit the library. Suddenly, Grandma tells City to go get her a switch so she can give him a beating. Grandma hasn’t switched him in a long time, but City is afraid. He finds a switch from the yard, but as he’s handing it to her, he runs away. Grandma chases him in a circle, stops him, and beats him on the ground. Afterward, Grandma has City bathe, prays with him, and gives him dinner. She tells City that Mama wanted him to come to Melahatchie so she could switch him and have him baptized.
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “MyMy, Coach Stroud, and Sooo Sad.”
City takes his brush and book and leaves the house in search of his friends, Shay, MyMy, and Kincaid. City finds MyMy at her house, and they head toward what they call the “Magic Woods.” On the way, City and MyMy chat and joke. When MyMy sees a truck with several mean white men, she drags City back to Old Morton Road, where they run into a baseball coach named Stroud. He’s selling watermelon out of his truck. Coach tells City he saw him on television, and City wonders about the rumors he’s heard about Coach’s affair with a student. City asks to buy some watermelon, but Coach gets upset, insisting City can’t eat watermelon in front of MyMy because she’s white.
Coach leaves, and the truck of white men approaches City and MyMy. They start harassing City for his television appearance. Then they hand him a comb in exchange for his brush, insult him and call him the n-word, and kick him to the ground. A man whom City privately dubs “Sooo Sad” is behind the attack. After the men leave, City and MyMy walk toward the woods. MyMy asks City about the racial slur the men used, and City does his best to explain.
Grandma asks City about the cuts on his face when he returns home. City invents a story, but Grandma doesn’t believe him. Then Uncle Relle calls and congratulates City on his television appearance. He says that City is famous on YouTube and has various media figures and companies angling for his attention. City tries interrupting to tell Uncle Relle about the bad things that’ve been happening to him and about Long Division, but Uncle Relle isn’t listening. After the call, City goes out to the porch to read.
Part 1, Chapters 1-8 Analysis
The opening chapters of Part 1 introduce narrative’s structure and form—in particular, the protagonist’s first-person point of view. City’s vivid, excitable narrative voice reflects his young age; youthful exuberance and intense emotional experience shape the way that he depicts his world, creating an energetic mood and a fast-paced narrative atmosphere. City’s first-person perspective also informs the narrative’s primary conflicts, tensions, and stakes. For example, City’s ongoing rivalry with his classmate LaVander Peeler becomes a primary source of tension because battling LaVander at school and in the sentence competition is important to City. Throughout Chapter 1, City lays out his history with LaVander to explain why beating LaVander in the competition is on his mind, underscoring how desperate City is to prove himself to his classmates and to LaVander. The Can You Use That Word in a Sentence competition grants him the ideal platform to beat LaVander and to solidify his reputation at school.
Initially, City therefore sees the contest as a public extension of his ongoing battle of wits with LaVander. However, City and LaVander’s investment and participation in the contest introduces themes of the Intersection of Race, History, and Identity and the Impact of Media on Self-Perception. City’s experience of the competition complicates how he understands his culture, his community, and himself. In Chapter 3, LaVander’s father insists that the contest “is bigger than [the boys]” and that the hosts are simply “trying to decorate the contest with a little color” using City and LaVander (22). City doesn’t meditate upon this, both because he’s invested in reading Long Division and because he isn’t interested in getting involved with the Peelers. However, LaVander’s father’s ideas take on new meaning when the boys arrive at the Coliseum, where they face a network of racial biases and slights.
In this, the contest is a microcosm of American culture at large. The judges exploit City and LaVander throughout. They humiliate City by effectively forcing him to participate in his own oppression; though not etymologically related to the n-word, “niggardly” sounds so much like it that City could not say it without demeaning himself even if he did know its meaning and history. Moreover, in this context, the judges’ claim that City has failed to use the word correctly, though technically correct, is symbolically tantamount to accusing him of failing to understand racism—a highly patronizing attitude given the judges’ own whiteness. Simultaneously, they intentionally push LaVander toward the front of the competition, but the word that seals his (temporary) victory—“chitterlings”—refers to a kind of soul food and is therefore coded as Black. As City observes, the judges clearly do not believe a Black contestant could win a “fair” contest, making their efforts to rig the contest in LaVander’s favor an expression of racist contempt. Moreover, their word choice reflects their expectation that LaVander conform to stereotypes of Black Americans, while their determination that LaVander win is a self-serving effort to prove their own inclusivity. The competition thus represents the ways in which the white, patriarchal system is designed to disadvantage and exploit its Black citizens no matter how Black citizens perform their identities or cater to white expectations. Before the competition, LaVander asks City to understand how “much work [there is] for both of [them] to do in the next three hours” if they want “to show everyone, including white folks, [...] what was possible” (29). By contrast, City urges LaVander not to worry about impressing white people but rather to win the contest on behalf of Black boys like him. In the end, both approaches prove ineffective. Despite the boys’ efforts to prove themselves capable and intelligent, the contest is orchestrated against them even when it superficially appears to favor them.
City’s outburst on stage initiates a narrative shift, as Mama’s frustration with City inspires her to send City to Melahatchie to spend a few days with Grandma. City’s journey away from home shifts the narrative setting, atmosphere, and stakes. In Jackson, City is able to inhabit his adolescence in a more concerted manner, acting tough and playing at being an adult both at school and at home Whenever City goes to see his grandmother, however, he “always [feels] younger” than he is because Grandma has “really never talked to [him] or treated [him] any different between the ages of five and fourteen” (50). Finding himself in this more childlike role further destabilizes City’s sense of identity, foreshadowing coming conflicts in City’s life. Meanwhile, City is also seeing his grandmother in new ways; she is deferential to the white woman at Walmart in a way City isn’t used to and is only vaguely beginning to recognize as a protective measure. Being in a different environment around a different network of familiar and unfamiliar people promises to challenge City in new ways.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study Guide
Plus, gain access to 9,150+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Kiese Laymon
