43 pages • 1 hour read
Aimee NezhukumatathilWorld of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
Aimee NezhukumatathilNonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: “Ribbon Eel”
Ribbon eels are colorful, thin eels with gaping mouths. They are “content to stay in the same reef hole or coral heap for years” (124). Nezhukumatathil sees ribbon eels while scuba diving in the South China Sea while she is three months pregnant. She takes maternity leave after giving birth to her younger son, Jasper, who is “famous among my friends and neighbors for constantly opening his wee mouth in shock and surprise and wonder” (125). Jasper sleeps very little as a baby. Nezhukumatathil frequently carries him around the house at night, and Jasper gets excited seeing mundane household items. Finally, she reflects how quickly her children grow up. She doesn’t miss the lack of sleep but does miss the sense of wonder she shared with her son in his infancy.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Questions While Searching for Birds with My Half-White Sons, Aged Six and Nine, National Audubon Bird Count Day, Oxford, MS”
This chapter is a list of questions and statements from Nezhukumatathil’s sons. Some are mundane, while others have broader existential or poetic meanings. Some questions are about the birds they are looking at, but “Is there a bathroom nearby” (128) also comes up several times. Some questions have more serious implications, such as “Will I be brown or white when I grow up?” (129) and “Will you be missing when I’m forty?” (131). Her children likewise talk about school lockdown drills and ask about “people who will hunt kids” (129).
Chapter 24 Summary: “Superb Bird of Paradise”
At Nezhukumatathil’s wedding in Western New York, many attendees wear brightly colored “saris and Barong Tagalogs” (133), formalwear from India and the Philippines. The outfits remind her of colorful birds of paradise. Like wedding guests, birds of paradise dance as part of their mating ritual. Adorned by shocks of color amidst black feathers, a male bird of paradise will perform a swirling courtship dance to win a female’s approval.
Nezhukumatathil and her husband have a “do not play” list for their wedding DJ that includes “Macarena.” Their DJ cancels and sends a replacement DJ, who is not aware of the list, and plays “Macarena” before Nezhukumatathil can protest. Everybody at the wedding knows the dance, and Nezhukumatathil ends up enjoying it. She marvels at the cultural ubiquity of the song and at the multicultural cast in its accompanying music video. Fifteen years later, her sons take dancing lessons, and she is happy that they “unabashedly love to dance” (127).
Chapters 22-24 Analysis
“Ribbon Eel” and “Questions” focus on Nezhukumatathil’s experiences as a mother. The primary metaphor provided by the ribbon eel is its gaping mouth, “frozen in surprise and delight” (124), which reminds her of her son’s expressions of wonder. Busy and tired with a newborn, she “had no language for poems then” (126); nevertheless, her son’s excitement over mundane household items reflects a poetic attitude of open attentiveness. One of Nezhukumatathil’s main goals as a parent is to pass her sense of wonder and curiosity on to her children.
This curiosity is expanded in “Questions,” a poem made up of her children’s persistent questions and statements while bird watching. The chapter’s form as a barrage of questions implies both the annoyance and the patience of parenthood. As in other chapters, Nezhukumatathil and her family are connected by their engagement with the natural world. She shares her love by sharing her passion for birds and by humoring their questions. The questions themselves touch on a number of Nezhukumatathil’s common themes, including race, violence and death, family, and wonder. Nezhukumatathil’s answers are not included, and we can presume that this is because many of them, such as when the children ask whether there are “people who will hunt kids” (129), are unanswerable. Other difficult or unanswerable questions include, “Why do some white people not like brown people?” (129) and “Will you be missing when I’m forty?” (131). Echoing early chapters on her own childhood like “Peacock,” this essay also illustrates children’s innocent ignorance of racism.
Nezhukumatathil hints at the innocence of 1990s multiculturalism in “Superb Bird of Paradise” with her description of the “Macarena” music video. At the very least, her description of the dance at her wedding is an argument for the cross-cultural, communal power of joy and dancing. Nezhukumatathil’s description of the birds of paradise, the dance at her wedding, and “the wonder [of having] sons who unabashedly love to dance” are more testaments to color, joy, and lifelong wonder (137).
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By Aimee Nezhukumatathil
