Feathers Themes

Frannie has grown up communicating by using sign language (as well as vocal speech) because her older brother, Sean, is deaf—Feathers explores how this communication, along with Sean's inability...

In Feathers, Frannie is constantly talking about how important her family is. They may have difficulties—her dad travels a lot for work, her mom has had troubled pregnancies, and her brother is d...

When Frannie goes to school in Feathers, it's obvious that she's got a bit of a Mean Girls situation going on with one of the girls at school—Maribel. Maribel is pretty snooty and makes mean joke...

There's a scene in Feathers where Sean asks Frannie what she would do if she could go to the other side of the highway—and Frannie immediately tells her brother that she likes it just fine where...

Considering the fact that Feathers is a story in which one of the main characters is known as Jesus Boy, it follows that readers should expect some religious and spiritual themes. Throughout the bo...

Feathers is set in a small town in the 1970s, which means that it's a time when race relations are pretty shaky. Right away, the novel shows the reader that there's a great divide between the black...

People in Feathers aren't just separated by race—they are also separated by class. This is especially clear whenever Maribel, who used to attend a private school, is around. She looks down on her...

Even though the community in Feathers is pretty tight-knit, many of the characters experience the pain of isolation and loneliness. Even though Sean has grown up in this community his whole life, h...

Nothing particularly scary happens in Feathers—no one dies, and there isn't a dramatic scene where all of the characters have to arm themselves with shovels and kitchen appliances in order to fen...

The truth will set you free… or so the saying goes. That's certainly the case in Feathers, a book in which every character is searching for their own personal truth—especially Frannie. Frannie'...