Chapter 1: April 7 Summary

Jazmin's sister CeCe tells her that on the night in the late 1950s when she was born her parents stayed up all night timing her mother's contractions and arguing about how to spell her name. CeCe was only six and normally would have been asleep but the thin walls of the tenement they lived in carried the sounds of her parents' voices to her room, keeping her awake.

The dispute over Jazmin's name centered over her father's wish to connect it to jazz music. Her father was an insurance salesman and a frustrated jazz saxophonist. Since he couldn't play in a jazz band, he wanted to pay tribute to "American's only original art form" (4) by making it part of his daughter's name. Her mother finally agreed to name their daughter Jazmin Shelby. Jazmin learned through the years that people would always...