Why is Leonie the way she is

 One of the parts of this book that I found most upsetting is how little effort Leonie is willing to put into her kids. That's not to say that she doesn't love her kids, or that she is more flawed than other characters in the book, but as someone who’s parents provided me every opportunity to succeed, I have a hard time reading this book and listening to Leonie’s thought process, even though I do feel bad for the grief she had to go through. Leonie didn't deserve what happened to her brother, and I can't judge how she chooses to deal with that. And sometimes, grief lasts longer in certain people, and it can affect someone for the rest of their life, but learning how to deal with that grief in a healthy way, especially when you have kids is very important, and instead of turning to her loved ones for help, Leonie turned to drugs. Jojo shares with us some insight on the kind of mother Leonie was before she started drugs, and how she was more nurturing and actually spent time with the kids: “Back when I still called Leonie Mama…..when she’d push me on the swing…..when she’d sit next to me on the sofa and watch TV with me….before she started snorting crushed pills”(Ward 7). She might not have been perfect, but she had good traits, and took time to bond with Jojo. After taking up drugs, she gave up on bonding with her kids, to the point that her 3 year old daughter subconsciously refers to Leonie by her name, rather than calling her Mama. Most babies form an attachment to the mom. My mom worked a lot and I wasn't around her too much, but I still cried out Mama every time she left. The fact that Leonie isn't around enough for Kayla to recognize her as a motherly figure is very concerning, and shows the contrast between Jojo’s seemingly better relationship with Leonie during his upbringing and Kayla’s.

Her drug use plays a major part in her behavior, but one of the most insightful and emotional scenes I've read so far involving Leonie’s actions was a conversation between Jojo and Mam, where Man goes to say that “she [Leonie] ain’t got the mothering instinct. I knew when you was little and we was out shopping, and she bought herself something to eat and ate it right in front of you,” (Ward, 233). Small acts like this show a lot about a person because they are acts that come naturally to a person and don't require much thinking. When you are walking out a door, most people check to see if they need to hold it for anyone else without thinking about it. When having guests over, most people automatically offer their guests water or a snack. These are things conditioned in people from birth, and the fact that Leonie is so selfish as to not consider to offer her child food that she is eating right in front of him makes me really upset. Clearly Mam recognizes this is wrong, and most likely didn't raise her that way, so this leads to the question of if Leonie is inherently selfish, and further makes me wonder if people’s core values can really be changed depending on how they grow up. Jojo shows that you can still be inherently good with a rocky upbringing, because he was raised by a mom so selfish and careless, yet he is still very loving and caring towards Kayla, not getting influenced by Leonie and thinking that is how he should act. In my opinion, Leonie’s behavior is heavily influenced by her grief and her upbringing, but she maintains this selfishness that doesn't seem to come from Mam or Pop, so I’m wondering if it comes from anywhere, or if down to her core, that's how she is.