49 pages • 1 hour read
Bolu BabalolaA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Kiki visits her mentor, Dr. Miller. It’s been two weeks since Ty’s party, and she and Malakai are growing closer. Dr. Miller is pleased by the progress on both their projects. Kiki believes she’s ready for the internship, telling her advisor, “I feel more me. Like I’m hiding less” (287).
Outside the studio, Kiki encounters students led by Adwoa, protesting the debate with the Whitewell Knights. Kiki and Malakai make their way through watching white students. Adwoa reveals that the Whitewell Knights have been paying Zack to disrupt Blackwell events and have been trying to recruit him to their organization. They like to have at least one black student, Adwoa says, so the Knights can claim they’re not racist. Adwoa says her girlfriend has found all sorts of dirt on Zack, and Adwoa has quit her position in the cabinet of the ACS. Adwoa wants to expose Zack, and Kiki says she can help. She knows she may lose followers if she gets political, but she feels Zack needs to be stopped. She uses her Brown Sugar slot to expose that Zack has been taking money from the Whitewell Knights to sabotage the Blackwell community. She insists, “It’s our right not to have our rights be the subject of debate, protesting against the sanctioning of hate” (290). She says Zack is the real Wasteman of Whitewall and calls for a new election, with Adwoa, Shanti, Chioma, and Aminah as candidates.
Later, as she visits Malakai, Kiki reports that she passed the Whitewell Wailers on campus singing a rendition of the song “Ni**as in Paris,” though they replaced the n-word with “suckas,” as if, she says, that would make it less of a hate crime. As she passed, they serenaded her by including her in their song. Malakai is feeling low because he told his dad about his summer job at a production house and his father dismissed the opportunity. Kiki gives him a celebratory present, a movie clapper with his name written on it as the director. She tells him she’s proud of him. Malakai says it’s the second-best gift he’s gotten, after her.
Kiki throws a campaign social at Sweetest Ting, and it’s a success. Aminah is impressed to see all the different social groups coming together, just as Kiki has reconciled with Rianne. Brown Sugar lost some of its audience with Kiki’s political move, but she would rather have an audience of people who care. Kiki bristles when Malakai mentions Ama, his old girlfriend. Simi thinks that what Kiki and Malakai have has become real. Simi admits she shared video footage of Zack and Malakai fighting to make Zack look bad; she’s been investigating him. Simi, as a former president of ACS, is angry at what Zack is doing. Simi thinks that, when she leaves, Kiki should take over as “Boss Bitch” of Blackwell and suggests Kiki should run for president. Zack, in retaliation, posts a live video where he reveals he and Kiki were in a relationship and claims she is slandering him because she’s mad he ended things. He posts a picture he took of Kiki in her underwear. She is humiliated and angry that a man is, once again, manipulating her.
Kiki takes refuge in her favorite spot in the library, looking at a book on Yoruba history and power. She’s worried that, with this video attacking her, she’s screwed things up for all of Blackwell. Malakai finds her and offers support, and Kiki reminds him their relationship is fake. She wonders if he has just been using her attention as leverage, like Nile and Zack. She is scared by how much she likes him and worried about the power he will have to hurt her later. Seeking to protect herself, she insults him, suggesting he has “daddy issues.” They break up, Malakai leaves, and Kiki cries.
Kiki hides in her room to mope, and Chioma, Shanti, and Aminah perform an intervention, coming into her room with wine and ice cream. Chioma places crystals around the room while Shanti sorts through Kiki’s makeup. Kiki hasn’t apologized to Malakai, because she’s worried their relationship was just fantasy. Shanti informs Kiki that she hasn’t messed anything up for Blackwell; people have been able to figure out for themselves that Zack behaved badly. Kiki confesses that she and Malakai were fake dating and the girls are unfazed because they can see that it evolved into something sincere; Kiki is the only one who doesn’t realize it. Kiki says she won’t go to the AfroWinter ball now, and Aminah gives her a talking to. She asks why Kiki won’t socialize with her. Aminah says Kiki helped bring Blackwell together, and she should be part of that. Kiki realizes she is being selfish and also a coward. Kiki looks at messages for Brown Sugar and realizes there are many showing solidarity, some from other women who have been manipulated or extorted by Zack using revealing pictures he took. That shakes her out of her self-pity, and she decides to meet with Simi.
An email from Dr. Miller reminds Kiki that skipping her seminar is not the answer to her problems. She tells Kiki, “Your power is in your truth. Stand in yours” (324).
Kiki arrives at The Pemberton with Aminah, Shanti, and Chioma for the AfroWinter ball. She is nervous about seeing Malakai. All the girls are wearing outfits in Ankara prints, a unique element of West African fashion.
Simi has arranged to let Kiki do a popup Brown Sugar episode at the DJ booth for the ball. Kiki realizes it no longer feels right to keep herself separate from the others. She looks at the crowd and thinks, “It was an Afrotopia, Nkrumah’s dream, compacted into a midsized event hall often used for regional corporate seminars” (329). Simi and Adwoa enter together. Aminah is upset to see Kofi flirting with Zuri Isak. Kiki questions why she feels she needs to make Kofi work for her attention, and Aminah admits she wants to be sure he will cherish her. Kiki mentions her fake relationship and Aminah tells her Malakai was never faking how he felt for her. Malakai enters, and Kiki realizes she has fallen in love with him. She realizes that, instead of pushing him away, she should have told him they could become supernovas together.
Kiki begins her Brown Sugar show. She admits she was hooking up with Zack but did not have feelings for him. She projects on-screen proof of how Zack blackmailed other women. She says Blackwell deserves better: “We’re a community, a movement, and a family. Family don’t sell each other out,” Kiki says (339). She also confesses that she started out faking things with Malakai for Gotta Hear Both Sides. She admits it wasn’t cool to lie and admits romance scared her. But they became a real couple, and she was scared to let things get messy.
Aminah then says there is a message from their sponsor, and she plays parts of Malakai’s film that shows shots of Kiki and then Malakai enjoying themselves together, and a monologue from Malakai in which he confesses that he fell for Kiki. Being with her, he says, feels like getting the perfect shot, and he messed up when he backed her into a corner. Aminah then takes song requests. Malakai brings in the Whitewell Wailers, who perform “Thong Song” to the great delight of the crowd.
Kiki talks with Malakai, who explains that he stepped out to keep Zack from entering the party, but heard everything she said. He wants her to believe he’ll back her up from now on, and she promises the same. Kiki feels “like [she] could pluck stars from the sky and wear them on [her] ears” (348). Simi announces that the royal couple are Aminah and Kofi.
Lala Jacobs reports for The Blackwell Beat that Zack is being investigated by the university for corruption and harassment. The Whitewell Knights have been formally disbanded and condemned by the university.
Simi reports for The TeaHouse that Blackwellians have called for Kiki to become interim president. Simi says she hopes Kiki and Malakai will start to limit their public displays of affection. Adwoa is running for vice president and the team, including Aminah, Shanti, and Chioma, is calling themselves the Dahomey Amazons.
Kiki gets an email from NYU that she has been offered the summer internship with a full grant.
This section brings the various plot points to climax and wraps up the relationship as well as the individual character arcs for the protagonists while delivering a satisfactory punishment for the villain, Zack. All of these movements require truth-telling, something Dr. Miller, as the mentor figure, advises is the way Kiki can claim her personal power. Being honest is one of the risks that the protagonists learn is necessary to a fulfilling relationship, and the key theme of Love and the Risk of Betrayal comes to its resolution in this finale.
Kiki’s reconciliation with Rianne helps her heal from the earlier betrayal, but she falls back on her customary strategy of retreat when she feels attacked by Zack’s video. It takes her girlfriends to coax Kiki out of her shell and lay down the emotionally mature path to take. To do this, Kiki has to finally acknowledge her own truth: Her relationship with Malakai is entirely real, and is in fact love. The fact that they are dealing with different versions of the same challenge helps bring the two romantic leads together: Both need to realize they are in fact capable of a truly intimate relationship, and willing to be vulnerable to the other. Further showing their compatibility and connection, both bring out the best parts of the other. Kiki endorses and encourages Malakai’s ambitions to be a film-maker—something his father doesn’t approve of—while Malakai promises his support for Kiki’s artistic endeavors. Kiki’s success at resolving all her various challenges is capped by her acceptance into the summer internship at New York University, the culmination of her goals.
The expansion of her friend group, rather than shrinking or hiding after a painful experience, also helps Kiki determine to rewrite the manipulation she felt from Nile and Zack. She learns that the mature response is to be in a relationship—to belong—and risk the hurt and conflict that might inevitably result. Kiki’s realization that Simi is not an adversary but has rather, all along, been playing the part of a challenging mentor confirms this epiphany. Kiki is further motivated to act against Zack when she realizes she can help achieve justice for other women. Brown Sugar evolves from her personal refuge to become a platform for larger truths. In addition, Kiki’s stepping up to positions of leadership within Blackwell demonstrates that she understands that belonging to a community also means acting to support or protect that community where necessary.
The final section pulls together the gendered and racial misuse of power and leans into the theme of Cultural Pride and Heritage. Zack is revealed as the antagonist not only because of his misogynist attitudes but because he has been using his position of power to support the Whitewell Knights, whose racist agenda is revealed and ultimately disrupted. Countering Zack’s divisive moves are the efforts Kiki, Simi, and other Blackwellians are making to ensure unity across all the Black factions, the theme of then-President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah’s speech, now considered iconic, made at the 1963 meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Once Zack and his underhanded moves are ejected from Blackwell—quite literally, as Malakai keeps him from entering the ball—resolution is achieved with a musical performance, a classic move for certain entertainment genres but also, here, suggesting a performance of racial harmony, and the resolution of the theme Community Versus Competition. Malakai’s arranging for the Whitewell Wailers to sing one of Kiki’s favorite songs is the grand gesture that readers of romance look for as the main couple reconciles, but the performance also soothes over the racial tensions that had been simmering between Blackwell and the rest of Whitewell. This optimistic resolution is mirrored in the happy ending for the for the romantic relationship, for Kiki’s ambitions, and for the future of Blackwell in general, bringing a satisfactory conclusion to the novel’s themes of identity, belonging, and living one’s truth.
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