Here Comes the Sun: Deconstructed Student Essays

The Future

Thandi is Margot's younger sister. Through Margot's boss Alphonso, Thandi attends a private school on the island that is distant culturally from River Bank, where Thandi lives. On top of the cultural difference, Thandi experiences colorism which drives her to begin bleaching her skin. Thandi feels pressure from both her mother and her sister to do well in school and become a doctor. When her crush on Charles, a street boy, develops into a relationship, Thandi finds herself sacrificing her education for her love of art and her desire to be with Charles. After learning about, Thandi's childhood sexual abuse, Charles goes to fight her molester. After the fight turns deadly and a warrant is put out for Charles's arrest, Thandi goes to great lengths to find Charles and be with him again despite the protest of her family. Thandi's perspective represents the pressure on Black women to behave and look a certain way. Thandi's desire to be lighter is a result of a lack of social value, but Thandi learns the hard way that being lighter is simply not enough to suit neocolonial beauty standards. Whether or not Thandi reinforces this pressure on her future children is unknown but such matters are products of generational biases and will take internal reversal before it makes a widespread difference.

This page has paths:

This page references: