This summary covers “The Debate,” “Founder's Day,” “The Dirty Thirty,” “Reunion,” and “I'm Hungry.”

During another Chicasetta summer, Ailey’s old boyfriend David continues to visit Uncle Root despite no longer having a relationship with Ailey. He and Uncle Root often debate whether Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. Du Bois was the most influential African American intellectual; David pleads the case for Washington, while Uncle Root backs Du Bois. To make his case, Uncle Root tells David and Ailey about a speech Washington gave at a cotton expo in 1895. He says that his mother saw the speech and “had a memory like nobody’s business” (341). Washington assured his white audience that America’s Black population would be “patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful” toward their white neighbors and even went so far as to approve segregation, saying, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers” (342). David concedes the debate to Uncle Root.

When school resumes the following year, Ailey gets mixed signals from Abdul: The two have sex regularly, but he will not commit to being her boyfriend. Nevertheless, he wants to meet her family. On Founder’s Day, an annual celebration at Routledge, Abdul is upset when Ailey will not introduce him to her visiting family. Correctly assuming that this is because he will not make a commitment to her, he finally makes their relationship public at a rally that evening.

Ailey’s happiness is short-lived, however: When the two get into an argument one night, Abdul slaps her. She breaks up with him, but after he persistently pursues reconciliation over the summer, she takes him back. When Ailey brings Abdul to her family reunion that summer, Boukie and David show up and take the couple with them to get drinks at a bar. Ailey dances with David without Abdul’s “permission,” as Abdul puts it, which causes him to treat her coldly when the two return to Routledge in the fall. When he finally invites her to his apartment, it is only to accuse her of sleeping with David. As the argument escalates, Abdul hits her and then rapes her. He refuses to wear a condom, and Ailey soon finds out she has contracted gonorrhea. She takes antibiotics and determines never to reunite with Abdul.

This summary covers “All Extraordinary Human Beings” and “Nguzo Saba.”

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Ailey runs into one of her best Routledge friends, Pat. Pat has always flirted with her, and this time she returns his interest. The two drive to a motel to have sex. A few days later, she retrieves her things from Abdul’s apartment, making sure to tell him that Pat is a better lover before she leaves.

Ailey and Pat embark on a healthy, happy relationship. On Easter Sunday, however, Ailey goes to Pat’s home and meets his family, only to find his father bears a striking resemblance to Gandee. The resemblance unnerves her; she vomits on the way home from the pressure of trying to appear normal and polite under such a strain. When Pat suggests that they move in together soon after, she instead breaks up with him, offering an excuse instead of confessing the real truth—that she could never have a long-term relationship with someone whose father brings up her trauma so viscerally.

In Ailey’s final year at Routledge, her father dies suddenly of complications from a second heart attack. She defers her attendance at medical school, feeling adrift after the loss. When Nana Claire has a stroke and suffers severe memory loss, Coco arranges for a full-time caretaker and eventually reveals that she is dating the caretaker, Melissa. Noticing Ailey’s listlessness, Coco also arranges for Ailey to start volunteering at a local clinic in a poor neighborhood. When Ailey reports for duty, she finds that the clinic belongs to Zulu Harris, whom she knows from her parents’ stories and who welcomes her enthusiastically. The clinic work is not easy but becomes well worth the effort when she suddenly runs into the long-lost Lydia during her work there one day.