A Very Large Expanse of Sea: Chapters 27–38

by Tahereh Mafi
It is 2002, and Shirin, a Muslim-American teenager, faces prejudice from the students and teachers at her school. When popular basketball player Ocean James falls for Shirin, she has difficulty trusting that his affection is real — and fears their relationship will not be able to withstand the bigoted reactions of their community.

Here are links to our lists for the novel: Chapters 1–4, Chapters 5–10, Chapters 11–19, Chapters 20–26, Chapters 27–38
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inconspicuous
    not prominent or readily noticeable
    In the quiet, relative peace that surrounded our careful efforts to be inconspicuous, time sped up.
  2. cynicism
    a pessimistic feeling of distrust
    I was tired of hiding, too; I was tired of ignoring him at school, tired of always giving in to my cynicism.
  3. gradation
    relative position in a ranked series
    Once I started paying closer attention to him—and to his world—the subtle gradations of his life began to come into focus.
  4. quintessential
    representing the perfect example of a class or quality
    Ocean had this quintessential all-American look, the kind of look that made it easy for girls to fall in love with him, for scouts to know where to place him, for the community to think of him, always and forever, as a good boy with great potential and a bright future.
  5. inextricable
    incapable of being disentangled or untied
    What I kept forgetting, of course, was that high school was home to infinite cliches for a reason, and that Ocean was, in some ways, still inextricable from his own stereotype.
  6. demoralize
    lower someone's spirits; make downhearted
    I had to try and wash parts of it in the sink, which just made everything wet, and I was feeling more than a little demoralized as I hung the slightly damp scarf around my neck.
  7. revelation
    an enlightening or astonishing disclosure
    But this revelation only made the whole thing more painful.
  8. debacle
    a sudden and complete disaster
    And I took great care to appear so deeply, thoroughly unmoved by the whole photo debacle that the mess defused itself in a matter of days.
  9. notorious
    known widely and usually unfavorably
    My face had become notorious overnight, and Navid kicking the crap out of one of these kids for throwing a pastry at my head had complicated everything.
  10. slanderous
    harmful and often untrue; tending to discredit or malign
    His friends said awful things to him about me, about himself—things I don’t even want to repeat—and he was forced into an impossible position, trying to defend me against slanderous statements about my faith, about what it meant to be Muslim, about what it was like to be me.
  11. tentatively
    in a hesitant manner
    I felt it when he touched me, tentatively, like I might spook at any second.
  12. alienate
    arouse hostility or indifference in
    He was alienated by his friends and he shrugged it off; his coach kept harassing him about me and he ignored it.
  13. transpire
    come about, happen, or occur
    We’d run out of places to find privacy—even just to talk about all that had transpired.
  14. objectively
    in a manner not influenced by emotion
    Here, with enough space between myself and his screaming coach, I was able to process the situation a little more objectively.
  15. rhetoric
    loud and confused and empty talk
    What scared me most, it turned out, weren’t the threats. It wasn’t the abusive rhetoric, the blatant xenophobia.
  16. xenophobia
    a fear of foreigners or strangers
    What scared me most, it turned out, weren’t the threats. It wasn’t the abusive rhetoric, the blatant xenophobia.
  17. staccato
    marked by or composed of disconnected parts or sounds
    My heart was beating a staccato.
  18. patronizing
    characteristic of those who treat others with arrogance
    Her eyes were so patronizing. Condescending. I felt entirely like a child.
  19. condescending
    characteristic of those who treat others with arrogance
    Her eyes were so patronizing. Condescending. I felt entirely like a child.
  20. scapegoat
    someone who is punished for the errors of others
    I’d become a convenient scapegoat.
  21. expletive
    profane or obscene expression usually of surprise or anger
    My feelings were still inarticulate, comprising little more than tears and expletives.
  22. unfurl
    unroll, unfold, or spread out
    It was easy to unfurl the linoleum in deserted alleys and parking lots.
  23. empirical
    derived from experiment and observation rather than theory
    It was impossible to deny, despite all empirical evidence to the contrary, that there wasn’t a massive cavity in my chest where my emotions used to be.
  24. stark
    complete or extreme
    The pain became a drumbeat; a rhythm I could write a
    song to. It was always there, stark and steady, rarely abating.
  25. buoyant
    characterized by liveliness and lightheartedness
    Yusef was so buoyant all the time; his smiles were occasionally contagious.
  26. lapse
    a failure to maintain a higher state
    She loved me, fiercely, but...my occasional lapses into deep, emotional holes made her think I was still uncooked.
  27. revamp
    patch up or renovate; repair or restore
    I was wearing a newly altered, totally revamped military-style jacket with epaulets and brass buttons, and I’d embroidered the back, by hand; it read, in a loose script, people are strange.
  28. epaulet
    an ornamental cloth pad worn on the shoulder
    I was wearing a newly altered, totally revamped military-style jacket with epaulets and brass buttons, and I’d embroidered the back, by hand; it read, in a loose script, people are strange.
  29. homage
    respectful deference
    It was not only an homage to one of my favorite songs by the Doors—but it was a statement that deeply resonated with me.
  30. resonate
    evoke or suggest a strong meaning or belief
    It was not only an homage to one of my favorite songs by the Doors—but it was a statement that deeply resonated with me.
  31. unflappable
    not easily perturbed, excited, or upset
    They were normally so cool; totally unflappable.
  32. feign
    give a false appearance of
    “Oh,” I said, feigning surprise.
  33. deem
    judge or regard in a particular way
    I was deemed cool. Safe.
  34. hypocrisy
    pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not have
    The breathtaking levels of their hypocrisy had given me a migraine.
  35. dregs
    sediment that has settled at the bottom of a liquid
    The air was cold—icy, even—and it smelled the way early mornings always smelled to me: like dead leaves and the dregs of unfinished cups of coffee.
  36. punctuate
    interrupt periodically
    I wish I’d noticed more when we walked inside, but the morning had already been punctuated by moments so intense that its details seemed to be rendered in watercolor.
  37. gingerly
    in a manner marked by extreme care or delicacy
    The knuckles on his right fist looked like they’d been destroyed, actually. Gingerly, I touched the torn skin.
  38. fortitude
    strength of mind that enables one to endure adversity
    Slowly, after a great deal of soul-searching, my classmates dug deep and found the intestinal fortitude to speak to me about things besides breakdancing and that thing on my head, the results of which turned out to be both entertaining and illuminating.
  39. generalization
    an idea or conclusion having broad application
    It scared me to realize that I’d done to others exactly what I hadn’t wanted them to do to me: I made sweeping statements about who I thought they were and how they lived their lives; and I made broad generalizations about what I thought they were thinking, all the time.
  40. fleeting
    lasting for a markedly brief time
    Besides, I’d moved enough times now to know that time was a fleeting, exhaustible thing.
Created on Wed Oct 24 08:58:53 EDT 2018 (updated Wed Oct 24 12:45:25 EDT 2018)

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