Symbols Black Girl, Call Home Jasmine Mans

Cigarette Smoke as a Recurring Symbol in Black Girl, Call Home

In Jasmine Mans's poetry collection Black Girl, Call Home, a seemingly mundane detail—cigarette smoke—appears in two distinct moments, each carrying a different emotional weight. This analysis examines how the symbol functions literally, where it recurs across the book, and how its meaning shifts from a trigger of personal memory to a marker of survival and contingency. The discussion connects the symbol to key characters and themes such as home and belonging, Black womanhood and resilience, and trauma and healing.

What the Symbol Literally Is

Cigarette smoke is the visible and olfactory residue of burning tobacco. In the world of the book, it is a physical scent that lingers in a grandmother’s home and a sought-after object in a gas‑station purchase. The smoke itself cannot be held—it dissipates, leaves a trace on fabric and in the nose, and carries with it associations of habit, comfort, danger, and time. Mans uses this ephemeral substance to anchor two emotionally charged scenes: one intimate and familial, the other public and life‑altering.

Where the Symbol Recurs

The symbol appears in two chapters:

  • Chapter 14 – “South 14th Street: Nana’s House Smells Like Cigarettes”: The entire poem is built around the sensory memory of cigarette smoke. The outline for this chapter states that the poem uses “a single sensory memory: the odor of cigarette smoke inside the speaker’s grandmother’s home” to “evoke Nana’s presence, the atmosphere of the house, and the speaker’s emotional connection to the place.” The street name, South 14th Street, roots the memory in a specific geography (likely Newark), and the smell becomes a conduit for the intangible legacy of a loved one.

  • Chapter 91 – “Sandra Bland: A Different Story”: In this poem, Sandra Bland “searches through her blackened leather purse for a pack of cigarettes, there’s always one left in the pack.” She discovers the last cigarette is already gone and drives to a convenience store for a fresh pack. Because of this detour, “she drives past the officer who would’ve arrested her, misses him by a block and four minutes. She doesn’t die—today.” Here, the absence of a cigarette and the subsequent trip to buy more alter the timeline of a real‑world event, saving the speaker’s life.

How the Meaning Changes

The two appearances of cigarette smoke carry contrasting connotations:

  • Memory and Presence (Nana’s House): The smoke at Nana’s house is a lingering scent that cannot be captured but is powerfully felt. It connects the speaker to her grandmother, to childhood, and to a home that exists now mostly in memory. The smell acts as a time machine, collapsing years into a single inhale. The meaning is one of ongoing presence despite absence: Nana may be gone, but her cigarette smoke remains in the walls and in the speaker’s sensory recall. This aligns with the book’s broader themes of identity and self‑acceptance and the search for roots.

  • Survival and Contingency (Sandra Bland): For Sandra Bland, the cigarette is a small comfort, a routine object that anchors her day. The search for the last cigarette reveals a habitual act of agency: checking the pack, finding it empty, deciding to buy more. That mundane decision saves her from an encounter (a traffic stop) that, in the real world, led to Sandra Bland’s death in custody. In Mans’s alternate telling, the cigarette becomes a symbol of chance and the fragile distinctions between life and death. The smoke here is not nostalgic but tactical; it represents the unseen ways Black women navigate hostile spaces.

These two meanings are not contradictory. Both involve smoke as a thread that connects a person to a life: in one case to a family heritage, in the other to the continuation of one’s own existence.

Connections to Characters

  • The Speaker (Jasmine Mans) : The speaker is the one who breathes in Nana’s cigarette smoke and who imagines Sandra Bland’s alternative timeline. For the speaker, the symbol is a personal artifact; it ties her to her own memory and to the collective memory of Black women who have faced similar vulnerabilities.

  • Nana (Grandmother) : Nana is never described by action in the poem; she is evoked entirely through the scent of her home. The cigarette smoke becomes her fingerprint. It suggests a woman who lived in that house, smoked regularly, and left a sensory impression so strong it remains after she is gone. Her connection to the symbol reinforces the theme of mother‑daughter relationship extended across generations.

  • Sandra Bland : In Mans’s poem, Sandra Bland is an active woman—she drives, searches her purse, decides to buy cigarettes. The cigarette is an emblem of her everyday autonomy. The poem gives her a life that continues because of a trivial errand. This reframes her historical death not as inevitable but as a stroke of bad timing, and the cigarette becomes a fragile protective charm.

Connections to Themes

  • Home and Belonging: Nana’s house is the most direct symbol of home in the collection, and the cigarette smoke is its signature. It connects the speaker to a physical space that is also an emotional anchor. In contrast, Sandra Bland’s car and the convenience store are mobile, temporary spaces; her search for cigarettes highlights how Black women seek comfort and safety even when “home” is not a fixed location.

  • Black Womanhood and Resilience: Both Nana and Sandra Bland are Black women whose lives are marked by small, resilient acts. Nana’s cigarette habit is a quiet, daily ritual; Sandra Bland’s decision to buy more cigarettes is an assertion of routine in the face of a world that may not want her to live. The smoke they leave behind or chase after is a testament to persistence.

  • Trauma and Healing: The scent of Nana’s cigarettes is a healing memory for the speaker—it brings her back to a time of safety and love. For Sandra Bland, the cigarette is not healing but survival. The symbol thus spans both the gentle repair of memory and the sharp edge of systemic threat, tying into the book’s exploration of trauma and healing.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the cigarette smoke in “South 14th Street: Nana’s House Smells Like Cigarettes” function as a sensory trigger?

Answer: The smell of cigarette smoke triggers the speaker’s memory of her grandmother’s home and presence. Because the poem relies entirely on this olfactory detail, the smoke becomes the only evidence of Nana’s existence in the space. It evokes a feeling of being with Nana again, even though she is absent. The smoke is intangible yet potent, representing the lasting emotional legacy a loved one leaves behind.

2. In “Sandra Bland: A Different Story,” what role does the missing cigarette play in altering history?

Answer: The missing last cigarette forces Sandra Bland to drive to a convenience store. This detour causes her to pass the officer who would have arrested her “by a block and four minutes.” The cigarette creates a small gap in time and space that saves her life, at least for that day. The poem thus uses the cigarette to emphasize how random circumstances can determine fate, and how mundane acts—like buying a pack of 100s—can become acts of survival.

3. Compare the emotional tone of the cigarette smoke in Nana’s house versus Sandra Bland’s poem. What does each reveal about the speaker’s relationship to the past and future?

Answer: In Nana’s house, the smoke is warm, lingering, and tied to personal history; it invites reflection and a sense of belonging. In Sandra Bland’s poem, the smoke is urgent and linked to a narrow escape; it keeps the future open. Together, they show that the same symbol can hold both nostalgia (looking back) and contingency (looking forward). The speaker’s relationship to the past is one of protective memory while her relationship to the future is one of precarious hope.

4. How does the symbol of cigarette smoke connect to the book’s title Black Girl, Call Home?

Answer: The title suggests a call to return—to a place, a self, a community. Cigarette smoke at Nana’s house is the sensory marker of that home; the speaker “calls home” by remembering the smell. For Sandra Bland, “calling home” might mean staying alive to eventually call or return; the cigarette becomes the means of that survival. In both cases, the symbol ties the act of calling home to the physical, emotional, and sometimes dangerously contingent lives of Black girls and women.

Conclusion

Cigarette smoke in Black Girl, Call Home is far more than a passing detail. It carries the full weight of memory in Nana’s house and the razor‑thin margin of life in Sandra Bland’s alternate story. Jasmine Mans transforms a familiar, often negative scent into a complex symbol: it is a souvenir of love, a mark of presence, and a fragile tool of self‑preservation. Readers who follow the thread of cigarette smoke through the collection discover how the smallest, most fleeting elements of daily life can hold the most profound meanings about heritage, survival, and what it means to come home to oneself.