Sources of Light

One of the books I read this summer is called Sources of Light by, Margret MuCullen. It is about a light skinned girl named Sam, who is living in the era when the races of blacks and whites are being discussed (pre-Civil War). She just moved to Jackson, Mississippi so her and her mother could start a new life because her father had just gotten killed in the Vietnam war. At her school she meets all different kinds of people with all different kinds of opinions.

 Then Perry, her soon to be mothers new boyfriend shows up. She shows her how to see the world through a camera and how to capture moments that could never be forgotten in the hard times that they lived in. He taught her how to develop film and even gave her a camera of her own when she became good enough. After Perry was taken from his house one night and beaten to death because he was taking photographs of a riot about if blacks could vote or not, everything changed. Sam and her mother moved again and again hoping that they would end up in a place where all people all races, would be treated equal.

This was a very interesting book for me. I have never read about a book about race and it was very inspiring to me. I think that Sam was a very outgoing girl that had her aspirations set strait for her. For example instead of going and trying to be friends with the most popular girl in school, she decided to be friends with a boy named Ears who nobody is really friends with. She also chose to be in a riot and go and take pictures of the scene even though she knew it was dangerous, but wanted to document it.

Throughout this book I could see this person evolve before my eyes. At first when she moved to Jackson, she was still mourning over her dad dying. Bye the end of the book she accepted that he was dead and that she would find many more amazing people in life like her dad and Perry. I saw her make mistakes like date a girls brother who I knew would never stay with her for long. Overall I think that she ended up in the book a fully matured grown woman, even though the book was only over a course of a half a year. I think that she changed because her surroundings changed and she had experiences that had broken her heart, and experiences that would scare her forever.