The First Part Last and Heaven by Angela Johnson
"The First Part Last" and "Heaven" by Angela Johnson are two interconnected novels that delve into complex themes of family and identity through the experiences of their teenage protagonists. "Heaven," published in 1998, follows fourteen-year-old Marley, who discovers her true parentage after receiving a letter that disrupts her idyllic life in the small town of Heaven, Ohio. This revelation sends her into a journey of self-exploration and redefinition of her familial relationships, particularly with her adoptive parents and her biological father, Jack.
Five years later, Johnson released "The First Part Last," which tells the story of Bobby Morris, a sixteen-year-old who unexpectedly becomes a parent when his girlfriend Nia goes into a coma after their daughter, Feather, is born. Bobby's struggle to balance his responsibilities as a single father with his own teenage desires captures the complexities of growing up while caring for a child. Both novels feature characters that face significant challenges and emotional turmoil, yet they are often portrayed with a sense of unwavering love and support from their families and friends.
While some critics have pointed out the idealized portrayals of small-town life and parental figures, Johnson's writing is celebrated for its emotional depth and lyrical quality. The narratives invite readers to reflect on the nature of family bonds, the impact of unexpected circumstances, and the journey of personal growth in the face of adversity. Both works have received critical acclaim, underscoring their significance in young adult literature.
The First Part Last and Heaven by Angela Johnson
First published:Heaven, 1998; The First Part Last, 2003
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of work: Late twentieth century
Locale: Brooklyn, New York; Heaven, Ohio
Principal Characters:
Bobby Morris , a boy who fathers a child at age sixteenNia , Bobby’s girlfriend and the mother of his daughterFeather , Bobby and Nia’s babyMarley , a teenaged girl who lives in Heaven, Ohio, with Momma and Pops, whom she believes to be her parentsUncle Jack , Marley’s real father
The Novels
In Heaven and The First Part Last, Angela Johnson explores the meaning of family and of parent-child relationships. Heaven was published first, in 1998, and five years later, Johnson produced The First Part Last as a prequel.
In Heaven, fourteen-year-old Marley has it all. Heaven, Ohio—where Marley lives happily with Momma, Pops, and her brother, Butchy—is the essence of small-town bliss. It is quiet, safe, friendly, and traditional. Marley goes to school and enjoys spending time with her best friend, Shoogy Maple, whose family is “perfect.” Frequently, Marley’s parents send her to the store to wire money via Western Union to Pops’s twin brother, Jack. Uncle Jack writes Marley letters about his ramblings though the Midwest with his dog, Boy. Marley babysits for Feather Morris and becomes close friends with her father, Bobby, who lives above a frame shop in Heaven and paints billboards for a living. Sometimes Marley, Bobby, and Feather take Bobby’s car and visit Amish country. Bobby reveals that he identifies with the isolation of the Amish.
Suddenly, Marley’s tranquil world is shattered. A letter addressed to Monna Floyd arrives from a burned-out church in Alabama. The letter explains that records have been destroyed in the fire and need to be replaced. The letter reveals that Momma and Pops are not Marley’s biological parents. Jack is her father, and her real mother, Christine, died when Marley (Monna) was an infant. Jack could not stand her loss and left the baby with his brother and sister-in-law.
This revelation sends Marley into a morass of despair and confusion. She feels betrayed and nameless, uncertain of whom she can trust and whose identity is hers. Her adoptive parents are liars, and Butchy, whom she always believed was her brother, is actually her cousin. As Marley struggles with her redefinition of self and family, Jack decides to travel to Heaven to meet his daughter at last. Marley comes to accept the love of her adoptive family and finds a new kind of family bond in her redefined relationships with Butchy and Jack.
In The First Part Last, Bobby Morris is a teenager living in New York. On his sixteenth birthday, he receives some unexpected news: His girlfriend Nia is pregnant. Soon, school and friends are forgotten, as Bobby accompanies Nia to doctor’s appointments and meetings with a social worker, who encourages them to put the baby up for adoption. The couple waits too long for an abortion, and eclampsia sends Nia into an irreversible vegetative coma. Bobby rejects the option of adoption and shoulders the full responsibility of raising his baby girl, Feather.
Bobby struggles with fatherhood, but his adoration of Feather is unshakeable. Despite his love for his daughter, Bobby feels conflicted. At times, he wishes he could run to his own mother, Mary, and turn all his responsibilities over to her, but she insists that Bobby care for Feather himself. Bobby sees himself as a child with a child, yet he is determined to prove himself a man. His parents are estranged, so he leaves his mother’s apartment and moves in with his father, Fred, in his “old neighborhood” in Brooklyn. Bobby’s stay with Fred is short. After being arrested for painting graffiti, Bobby decides that he cannot continue to care for Feather and go to school in an urban setting. He moves with Feather to the small town where his brother lives: Heaven, Ohio.
The Characters
Johnson’s major characters are not perfect, but they are consistently sympathetic. Their flaws make them believably human, and their love for one another and their commitment to what is right approach heroic—sometimes overinflated—proportions. In the hands of a writer less skilled than Johnson, Bobby would too good to be true. Motivated only by love, he gives up friends, family, neighborhood, and school to devote his life to the care of an infant. Marley, initially unremarkable as a character, becomes deeper and richer as she explores the secrets of her past and resolves her conflicting notions of self, family, and community. Bobby and Marley are teen protagonists to whom young adult readers can relate.
The books’ minor characters are thinly developed, playing walk-on roles as friends, family members, or neighbors. The reader learns little about Bobby’s parents or Nia’s family. Marley’s parents are stereotypes: they are consistently loving, forgiving, supportive, and forbearing. Only in the paradisaic Heaven, Ohio, are they credible. Jack is a phantom wanderer, and his character grows no more accessible when he returns to his daughter in Heaven.
Critical Context
Some reviewers criticized Heaven for its unrealistic portrayal of small town life as idyllic and for its lack of conflict among characters—all of whom are consistently (and incredibly) loving, kind, and supportive. The First Part Last garnered similar criticism for its rose-colored portrayal of a conscientious, loving, competent, and caring sixteen-year-old single father, still going to school and tirelessly struggling to care for his baby daughter on his own, never wavering in love and devotion. Both books feature predictable, rather trite happy endings that please readers more than they please literary analysts.
While the characters and plot fail to ring true for some critics, Johnson is nearly always praised for the controlled emotional impact of her plain, spare writing. Her well-chosen, concrete details tap into her readers’ emotions. In one scene of The First Part Last, for example, Bobby paces the floors of his father’s apartment at five thirty in the morning with a wide-awake Feather in his arms. The sounds of the neighborhood are unfamiliar to him at such an hour, and he grabs the first thing he can find—his old Mets sweatshirt—to warm his shivering baby.
Johnson’s plots may be trite, but her execution saves her narratives from saccharine romanticism. The use of the present tense in both books draws readers into the minds and hearts of the main characters. In The First Part Last, alternating “Then” and “Now” chapters integrate Bobby’s struggles in the present with the backstory of the pregnancy and the loss of Nia. Johnson is a poet, and her images are often fresh and symbolic. In Heaven, for example, sheer curtains blow with a warm breeze across Marley’s face as she naps peacefully. In minutes, the thin, translucent veil they represent will be ripped away, and the serenity of Marley’s comfortable family life will be shattered, when the truth about her parentage is disclosed. Critics found more to love than to hate in these books, both of which won numerous honors, including the Coretta Scott King Award.
Bibliography
Beram, Neil. Review of The First Part Last, by Angela Johnson. The Horn Book Magazine 79, no. 4 (July/August, 2003): 459. Emphasizes that the alternation between “Then” and “Now” chapters allows readers to journey with Bobby through the tragedies and challenges that confront him.
Hinton, KaaVonia M. Angela Johnson: Poetic Prose. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2006. This compendium of reviews, interviews, and critical commentaries analyzes Johnson’s insights into contemporary culture and the connections between her work and African American literary history.
Hinton-Johnson, KaaVonia M. “Angela Johnson: Award-Winning Novels and the Search for Self.” ALAN Review (Fall, 2006). Looks at the extent to which identity is represented as socially constructed and constantly changing in Johnson’s work.
Johnson, Angela. “The Booklist Interview: Angela Johnson.” Interview by Gillian Engberg. Booklist 100, no. 12 (February 15, 2004): 1074. Johnson reveals that characters drive her fiction.
Rochman, Hazel. Review of Heaven, by Angela Johnson. Booklist 95, no. 2 (September 15, 1998): 219. Sees kindness and love triumphing over deception in the novel.
Rosser, Claire. Review of The First Part Last, by Angela Johnson. Kliatt 37, no. 3 (May, 2003): 10. Praises Johnson for creating characters that readers care about and evoking strong emotions with few words.