One Crazy Summer: "San Francisco Treat"–"Afua"

by Rita Williams-Garcia
In the summer of 1968, three sisters travel to California to visit their estranged mother. While there, they learn about the fight for equality and civil rights.

This list covers San Francisco Treat–Afua.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4

Here are links to our lists for other books by Rita Williams-Garcia: P.S. Be Eleven, Gone Crazy in Alabama, Clayton Byrd Goes Underground
12 words 490 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. excursion
    a journey taken for pleasure
    I told my sisters, “We’re going on an excursion.”
  2. oppress
    come down on or keep down by unjust use of one's authority
    And there was no telling Big Ma that Cecile was a freedom fighter, oppressed by the Man.
  3. rankle
    make resentful or angry
    Mean Lady Ming wasn’t rankled by the name Fern called her.
  4. amplify
    increase the volume of
    The first time Janice Ankton heard her voice boom out over all those loudspeakers, she jumped back. She soon overcame her amplified voice and proved a bigger ham than Vonetta on her showiest and crowiest days.
  5. brandish
    move or swing back and forth
    Janice brandished her silver cap gun at us tired and scared runaway slaves more than Sister Pat’s script had called for.
  6. ashen
    pale from illness or emotion
    Vonetta was supposed to introduce us and say the name of our poem and that our mother wrote it. But I could see her eyes growing big and her face ashen.
  7. shackle
    restrain with or as if with fetters
    "I birthed a black nation.
    From my womb black creation
    spilled forth
    to be
    stolen
    shackled
    dispersed."
  8. disperse
    cause to separate and go in different directions
    "I birthed a black nation.
    From my womb black creation
    spilled forth
    to be
    stolen
    shackled
    dispersed."
  9. dispatch
    send away towards a designated goal
    “I dispatched black warriors
    raged against unjust barriers..."
  10. reverberation
    an echo
    “Hear the reverberation
    of a stolen black nation
    forever lost
    to foreign shores
    where thieves do not atone
    and Mother Africa cannot be consoled.”
  11. atone
    turn away from sin or do penitence
    “Hear the reverberation
    of a stolen black nation
    forever lost
    to foreign shores
    where thieves do not atone
    and Mother Africa cannot be consoled.”
  12. sober
    become or cause to become more serious
    I wasn’t known for joking. That sobered them as much as Fern’s name, which they both mouthed.
Created on Thu Feb 28 14:09:00 EST 2019 (updated Fri Aug 01 13:15:29 EDT 2025)

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