Point of View

Rita Williams-Garcia tells her novel “One Crazy Summer” from the first-person, limited omniscient narrative, from the point of view of main character and principal protagonist, Delphine Gaither. This is done for at least three reasons: first, the first-person narrative mode allows the reader to experience things firsthand through the narrator. The narrator’s inmost thoughts and feelings are made apparent to the reader. Second, while much of the countercultural change occurring in the novel is being propagated and experienced by adults, the children are experiencing things, too. Here, a child is able to relate her experiences of 1968 Oakland. She is given a voice, the way the adults around her are also seeking voices in an era of change. Third, because Delphine is the narrator, and is an 11-year-old girl, she doesn’t know everything going on around her, and doesn’t know everything in the...