40 Fun Facts About Tears of a Tiger

Which Shakespeare play, studied in English class, upsets Andy Jackson so much he runs out?

Macbeth reaches its bleak speech about life being brief and meaningless, and Andy cannot sit through it. Death is the one subject he has been pretending not to think about.

Which character is Andy Jackson's girlfriend in Tears of a Tiger, who finally breaks up with him?

Keisha stands by Andy for months and is the one person who sees how deep his depression runs. She ends it when his need for her becomes more than she can carry alone.

Which sport do Andy Jackson and Rob Washington play for their high school in Tears of a Tiger?

Basketball frames the whole story: the fatal drive follows a big win, and Andy later takes over his dead friend's place on the team. The court becomes both his release and his guilt.

Which friend riding in the car on the night of the crash in Tears of a Tiger had not been drinking?

B.J. Carson stayed sober while the other three drank, and he still could not stop what happened. He later leans on his faith, praying for the friends he lost.

Dr. Carrothers, whom Andy Jackson visits after the fatal crash, is what kind of professional?

A psychologist is who Andy is sent to so he can talk through his guilt. He fools Dr. Carrothers by acting as though he is coping, which is one reason the adults around him miss the danger.

Which character visits Andy Jackson's grave and has the last word in Tears of a Tiger?

Monty, Andy's six-year-old brother, tells him at the graveside that he left before he could teach him anything important. He says he will miss him, and the book ends there.

What is the name of Andy Jackson's high school, which also gives its name to the trilogy of novels?

Hazelwood High is where all three novels unfold, each following a different teenager from the same circle of friends. Its teams are the Tigers, which is where the title's animal comes from.

What stops Andy Jackson and his friends from pulling Rob Washington out of the wrecked car?

The car explodes while Rob is still pinned inside, so the three who got out cannot reach him. All three survive, and all three have to live with what they saw.

Which novelist wrote Tears of a Tiger, her first book, which 24 publishers turned down?

Sharon M. Draper was teaching high school English when she wrote it for teenagers like the ones in her own classes. The twenty-fifth publisher she tried said yes.

What had Andy Jackson and his friends been drinking to celebrate before the fatal crash?

Beer flows after a big win for the team, and Andy gets behind the wheel anyway. The author insists the four are ordinary kids, which is the point: it could be anyone's car.

What is taken away from Andy Jackson after the crash that kills Rob Washington?

His driver's license is taken away once he is out of hospital. No punishment from outside comes close to the one Andy hands himself.

Who arranges for Andy Jackson to see Dr. Carrothers so he can talk through his guilt?

His parents send him, hoping an outsider can get him talking. Andy instead convinces the doctor that he is coping, and he is not.

What was Rob Washington's role on the school team, the one Andy Jackson takes over after the crash?

Captain was Rob's job, and stepping into it eats at Andy. He knows the place was never going to be his while his friend was alive.

Which minor character, one of Andy Jackson's teammates, is the hero of the trilogy's second novel?

Gerald is only a face in the crowd here, one of the boys on the team. The sequel rewinds to his early childhood and tells his story from the age of three.

Which novel is the sequel to Tears of a Tiger, its first chapter adapted from a short story?

Forged by Fire won its author a major award of its own. Its opening chapter had already been published in a magazine as a prize-winning story.

Which novel ends the trilogy begun by Tears of a Tiger, following Andy Jackson's ex-girlfriend?

Darkness Before Dawn picks up with the friends in their final year of school, still shaken by Andy's death. At graduation it is the girl who loved him who gives the closing speech.

Tears of a Tiger won the 'Genesis' prize for new talent given alongside which American book honor?

The Coretta Scott King Award honors Black authors and illustrators of books for young readers. Its new-talent prize, later named for John Steptoe, went to this novel in its very first year.

In which Ohio city's public schools did the author of Tears of a Tiger teach English for decades?

Cincinnati is where she built her teaching career, though she was born in Cleveland. She was named National Teacher of the Year while still in the classroom there.

After 24 rejection notices, which publisher finally said yes to the manuscript of Tears of a Tiger?

Simon & Schuster sent the one acceptance out of twenty-five submissions. The author says she nearly threw the envelope away unopened, sure it was another no.

Which visitors, sent in after Rob Washington's death, strike his classmates as no help at all?

Grief counselors are brought in from downtown, and one girl writes that they mostly sat about looking sympathetic. What helped, she says, was talking with friends in small groups.

A classmate's essay in Tears of a Tiger would abolish Band-Aids, five-dollar bills and which food?

Peanut butter was a treat until his mother left; now free jars of it are sometimes all there is to eat. The bandages never match his skin, and five dollars paid for the drinks on the night of the crash.

Which subject does the author say Tears of a Tiger deliberately leaves out of its teenage world?

Gangs, drugs and sex are all absent by design. She wanted ordinary kids dealing with homework, families and girlfriends, so that any reader could picture being in that car.

On what kind of road does Andy Jackson crash his car on the night Rob Washington dies?

An expressway is where it happens, late at night after the game. Rob, riding in the front passenger seat, is the only one of the four who does not get out.

In Tears of a Tiger, who dismisses Andy Jackson's grief as not serious because he is Black?

His own teachers say it to each other, in one of the book's sharpest scenes about race. One reviewer praised its picture of a system that will not trust or reach out to boys like Andy.

What does Rob Washington do in the nightmare that Andy Jackson has while babysitting his brother?

Rob blames him for dying, which gives Andy's guilt a face and a voice. The dream comes while he is at home looking after his six-year-old brother.

What do Andy Jackson's classmates write to him after his death, near the end of Tears of a Tiger?

Letters let each friend say what they never said to his face: one is furious, another cannot stop reliving the crash.

The sequel to Tears of a Tiger turns from drunk driving and grief to which hard subject?

Child abuse is at the center of the second book, which follows a boy trying to shield his younger sister. Like this novel, it refuses to give its readers an easy ending.

The author of Tears of a Tiger, then a teacher, says she wrote it partly during which school period?

Study hall gave her writing time, along with weekends, summers and the hours before and after school. She wrote it for teenagers in their own style, about their own world.

Who dared the future author of Tears of a Tiger to write something and enter a story contest?

One of her students, a ninth grader, handed her the entry form and told her to write something. Her story won first prize, and the novel followed.

Which description fits Andy Jackson's mother and father as Tears of a Tiger presents them?

Loving but preoccupied is the author's own verdict: they care about Andy yet are too busy with their own lives to see his pain. He complains that his father has not come to a single game all season.

Andy Jackson's car, wrecked in the crash in Tears of a Tiger, is which small Chevrolet model?

The Chevette is red, and news of a wrecked red one is how the girls first guess who was in the crash. Andy never drives it again.

What helps Tyrone Mills move past the crash in Tears of a Tiger, in a way Andy Jackson never can?

His girlfriend's support carries Tyrone through the months after the crash. Readers later wrote to the author asking whether the two ever broke up.

Why did the author build Tears of a Tiger from diary entries, essays, notes and news articles?

To teach writing was the plan from the start: each chapter models a form that pupils are expected to master. A class can practice the forms while following the story.

Which daily school routine supplies some of the documents that tell the story in Tears of a Tiger?

Morning announcements take their place beside diary pages, homework, notes and overheard staff-room talk. The reader pieces the story together from all of them.

Which magazine's story contest did the author of Tears of a Tiger win before writing the novel?

Ebony picked her story from thousands of entries. It later became the opening chapter of her second novel about the same group of friends.

Tears of a Tiger was written after classics by which Victorian novelist fell flat in class?

Charles Dickens was timely once, she reasoned, but his world no longer reached the teenagers in front of her. She set out to write something of quality about their own daily lives.

Where does Andy Jackson sense racism from the clerks who serve him, in Tears of a Tiger?

A shopping mall is one of the places where Andy feels racism aimed at young Black men, along with school. A Booklist reviewer said Black teenagers would recognize his account.

Where were Rob Washington's feet resting at the moment Andy Jackson crashed the car?

On the dashboard is where he had propped them, clowning around in the front passenger seat. The impact drove them through the windshield and trapped him in the car.

Why does Andy Jackson believe he cannot do well in class, in Tears of a Tiger?

He is an athlete, and Andy has absorbed the idea that boys who play ball are not the ones who earn good grades. The novel treats that belief as one more thing holding him back.

In Tears of a Tiger, Rhonda writes to her best friend Saundra, who has moved to which state?

California is three thousand miles away, and after one all-night call Rhonda's father has banned long-distance phoning. So her news from school goes by post, which is how readers get it.