Red, White, and Whole

Red, White, and Whole is a 2021 middle grade novel by Indian American writer Rajani LaRocca. The novel is written in verse, which means that each of the many short chapters is actually a poem. All of the poems come together to tell the story of Reha, a 13-year-old Indian American girl growing up in the Midwest in 1983 and struggling to find a balance between her family’s Indian culture and her desire to fit in with her American friends. To add to her troubles, Reha’s world is turned upside-down when her mother is diagnosed with leukemia. LaRocca, who is a practicing physician and an Indian immigrant to the United States, incorporates her own medical expertise and her personal experiences into the story. Red, White, and Whole was the winner of many accolades, including the 2022 John Newbery Honor for contributions to American literature for children, the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award, the 2021 New England Book Award.

This guide uses the 2021 Quill Tree Books e-book edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This guide and its source text both discuss grief and loss after the death of a parent. There are also some brief references to racism and discrimination.

Plot Summary

Red, White, and Whole begins in 1983 as 13-year-old Reha reflects on her life. Although she was born in America, her parents are Indian immigrants from Bangalore. Reha has always felt that she has two separate lives. In her family life, she connects with her family and the local Indian community at home and on the weekends. In her more public life at school, she listens to pop music and wants to be a normal American teenager. Reha is her parents’ only child, and they are both very proud of her. They pay for her to attend a private school and want her to work hard to achieve her goals. One of Reha’s best friends is Sunny, another Indian American girl who is almost exactly her age. Her other best friend is Rachel, a Jewish American girl who goes to school with Reha and also excels academically.

In Reha’s home, her mother is a powerhouse. She cooks all of the food, picks Reha up from school, sews many of her clothes, and also works in a hematology lab at the local hospital. Reha’s father is an engineer. Although Reha loves her parents fiercely, she sometimes resents them for preventing her from dressing and behaving like other girls her age. In English class, Reha connects with a smart and thoughtful boy named Pete when they are assigned a project about courtly love in Arthurian legend. Reha soon develops a crush on Pete and wishes that her parents would let her date boys. Although she loves her parents and her life in America, Reha feels alienated from her extended family in India. Reha’s parents love each other, but because their marriage was arranged, Reha thinks that they behave more like roommates than lovers. Reha’s mother keeps in touch with her sister, Prema, through phone calls and through letters called aerogrammes. Whenever Reha and her parents do visit India, the trip is long, and Reha feels just as out of place there as she does in America.

A school dance is coming up, and Reha asks permission to attend. Her father says yes, but her mother says no. Frustrated, Reha writes her mother a letter expressing her desire to join in the life that her friends have. She seals it and hides it in her room without showing it to anyone. Meanwhile, Reha and Pete work on their project together and decide on the traits that make someone a hero.

Shortly after Deepavali, the Hindu festival of lights that Reha and her parents celebrate in late autumn, Reha’s mother starts experiencing severe fatigue and other symptoms. She lets Reha go to the dance, where Reha dances with Pete and then holds his hand as they sit outside. Sunny’s mother comes to get Reha after the dance because Reha’s mother is in the hospital and is gravely ill. When Reha arrives at the hospital, she learns that her mother has leukemia, a blood cancer. Other women from the local Indian community bring food for Reha and her father while her mother stays at the hospital.

When she returns to school, Reha is overwhelmed by the love and support of her classmates. Reha’s mother starts her first course of chemotherapy; she will need to stay at the hospital for at least two weeks. Reha remembers an Indian story about Savitri, a woman who marries a man fated to die young. When Yama, the Lord of Death, comes to collect the man’s soul, Savitri tricks him into allowing her husband to continue to live. Remembering this story, Reha hopes that by being virtuous and diligent in her schoolwork, she too can save her mother from death. Reha’s father calls the rest of the family in India to tell them the news.

Reha and her father both struggle to continue their lives; Reha realizes how much her parents love each other and wonders why she ever thought of them as roommates. The first round of chemotherapy does not work, so the doctors start a second one. Reha starts spending her afternoons at Pete’s house so that her father does not have to leave work early to pick her up. Prema arrives to help take care of the family, as her sister is now sick with both cancer and pneumonia. At Christmas, Reha’s mother is still in the hospital; Pete gives Reha a mix tape of pop music.

Reha’s mother needs a bone marrow transplant, but nobody in the family is a match, even though Reha desperately wants to be the one to help her mother recover. Meanwhile, Prema learns that she is pregnant, to everyone’s delight. In February, Reha’s mother goes into remission and comes home. Things go well for a few months, but then the cancer returns. This time, Reha’s mother dies, and Reha mourns her deeply. One month later, Reha receives an aerogramme that her mother wrote shortly before her death. In the letter, Reha’s mother expresses her love for her daughter and encourages her to become anything she wants in her life.

Although she is still grieving, Reha understands that her mother will always be with her in her blood and in her memories. She begins to heal. Instead of feeling that she has two lives, Reha finally starts to feel that the Indian and American parts of herself are coming together to create a unified whole. Her father and friends reassure her of their ongoing support.