Summary

In Part 1, Chapter 1, a young man named Anders woke up to discover that his skin had turned from white to “a deep and undeniable brown” (3). Looking in the mirror in the bathroom, Anders felt distraught and angry. He punched the mirror. He felt as though he had been “the victim of a crime” (5). Anders called in sick to work. He did not have much food in the house, so he went to the grocery store. As he walked around the store, he felt like some of the white people he saw were staring at him. When he returned home, he smoked marijuana and wished he could speak to his mother, who was deceased. As a child, Anders had trouble in school, but his mother patiently helped him, teaching him to read and advocating for him to have extra time for tests. When he...