 Hello and welcome back to yet another GCSE revision video. Now this lesson is actually a fairly highly requested lesson especially from students who are on my AQA and edXL courses. Some of you guys have literally sent me messages, put it in the comments and so on that your school has chosen Anita and me as your modern set text and you'd find it super super helpful if I just did a really quick mind map summarizing the entire novel because it is a bit of a dense novel okay. So what I want to do within this lesson is to summarize in a nutshell all the major and the key events that happen in Anita and me and remember that Anita and me which obviously has Mina as the protagonist it is what we call a Bill Dung's Roman okay it's a coming-of-age novel which charts Mina's development through her early life and her early years okay. So make sure when you're writing about Mina and me and of course talking about the novel itself and the genre it belongs to it's a Bill Dung's Roman. So as you can see here behind me I've created a mind map summarizing in the 16 steps all the key events that happen within this novel which actually if I'm being completely honest it was one of my favorite novels okay it's quite dense but it's actually really really funny and it's just a really really nice novel okay so do give it a chance and do try to read it okay. Now let's go over the key events starting off with the beginning okay when we meet the main protagonist Mina. Now Mina who is nine when we first meet her we learned that Mina and her family her mother and father are the only Indians and the only Indian family in a place called Tollington in the West Midlands in England remember that Tollington is a fictional place that is set in the West Midlands okay and Mina is growing up within this fairly small community and her and her family are the only Indians in their community. Now Mina ends up befriending Anita okay the titular character of this novel so Anita is two years older than Mina and Mina is drawn to her okay she's a bit of a rebel she's very exciting she's unlike what Mina is used to and Anita who's a little bit of a rebel encourages Mina to misbehave for example in one particular incident Anita encourages Mina when they're going to a charity shop she encourages Mina to steal a collection tin which has money that has been given charitably to people which Mina does okay so she's heavily influenced by Anita but in a negative way. We also learned that Anita of course she unlike Mina is for a very unstable family in fact her mother ends up leaving and abandoning her and their family so in contrast to Mina who comes from a very stable and a fairly traditional Indian family Anita who's English her family is quite unstable and also we find that Anita has a bit of a malevolent side to her she's got a manipulative side to her because Mina is one of three key close friends of Anita alongside Sherry and Fat Sally and what Anita tends to do almost is like a kind of cruel game she plays them off against each other she creates rivalries between them it's up to Mina as well as Sherry and Fat Sally to almost prove themselves to Anita she's they're always kept on their toes okay so we find that Anita is a very manipulative and a bit of a malevolent character now we then learn as a story develops that there is a planned motorway that's going to be cutting through tollington and it will end up destroying parts of tollington once it's built and there's a lot of people who live in that community who are actually very very unhappy about these winds of change okay so this motorway which symbolizes the overarching change that's happening in British society at the time a lot of locals are very very unhappy and there's one particular village vet okay a party and at this local vet another character called Sam Lowbridge right he's kind of similar age to Anita he again is a massive rebel and he usually is quite nice to Mina however to show his outrage when he attends this vet he actually yelled very racist insults when he is criticising this motorway in front of everybody including Mina and her father who at the vet and we can see that there's now a shift right so Mina starts increasingly becoming aware of her own ethnicity and her own heritage which makes her realize that she's perceived very differently by English people and English society so now this starts creating a rift between Mina and the people who she grew up around who she simply thought they were all the same okay now as the story develops during this same local vet remember that you know Mina is really really close and she's she just loves Anita she sees a fortune teller with Anita okay and this fortune teller tells Mina that her mother will be unwell but also this fortune teller tells her to beware of Anita who's not a real friend and so this really weighs heavily on Mina she tries to brush it off when she leaves the vet but it weighs heavily on her she starts wondering okay what's gonna happen to my mom but also what's gonna happen to Anita who is a really close friend of mine I really admire her and you know she almost doesn't want to believe what the fortune teller has told her now one of the fortune teller's predictions comes right because Mina's mom does seemingly become very unwell but actually it's because she's pregnant and she ends up being rushed out of home by the ambulance unexpectedly to Mina's shock and surprise and then she gives birth to Sunil who's Mina's younger brother but because you know they don't have any help it's only the mother the father as well as Mina Mina's mother becomes very overwhelmed by all the tasks she has to do with a newborn as well as having a job and so on therefore they end up calling her own mother from India to come in order to help Mina's mother look after Sunil and also just look after the house okay so Mina eventually meets her grandmother Nanima who comes to help her but also she plays a really important role in now teaching Mina about her Indian heritage and Indian culture something that Mina was really not very connected to and not very attuned to okay so her grandmother's presence becomes really really powerful to her and what's also interesting is the grandmother even if she can't speak English when she does eventually meet Anita she doesn't like her okay all of these little subtle hints that are being dropped to Mina to show her and to foreshadow the eventual rift and the destruction of her relationship with Anita who she looked up to so much now as the story progresses Mina is once again reminded of her heritage she's once again reminded that tollington doesn't see people like her of her Indian heritage as equal or as the same as British people because there is a racist attack that takes place against an Indian man and Mina when she goes to visit Sherry whose parents own a horse farm a really nice horse farm you know Sherry when Sherry Anita are talking they think that Mina is out of air shot Anita brags to Sherry and Fat Sali about how she and Sam Lowbridge took part in the racist attack of this Indian man so Mina hears this right they can't they can't see Mina so they think that she's away with the horse and she's kind of playing with the horse and they don't realise that she's actually nearby Anita hears this and she realises that or rather Mina hears this she hears what Anita says and she realises that Anita and Sam have this very strong racist streak and this causes her to do something very self-destructive she decides to recklessly mount one of Sherry's horses she rides it around recklessly because she's so angry at what she's discovered and what this leads and what happens is she falls off the horse breaking her leg and therefore she then has to be hospitalised okay so now the events start accelerating when in hospital Mina ends up meeting another boy called Robert in hospital okay he's he's her age however he seems extremely ill however for the time that she stays there they form a bond a relationship and actually this becomes her first boyfriend so she becomes really hopeful of when he comes out you know she's gonna have a first boyfriend her first English boyfriend however even if they grow close once Mina gets well and leaves Robert is left in the hospital and then Mina receives a letter so she kind of keeps on writing letters back and forth with Robert when she's at home and he's in hospital and then one time when she doesn't hear from him she receives a final letter from his family which informs her that Robert has died which really devastates Mina okay this chance at you know young love that she had and she thought she was gonna get actually this chance is destroyed and once more she's alone okay then we find that Mina because obviously she's discovered what she's discovered about Anita and Sam she decides to distance herself from Anita okay and actually she decides to really work hard because there's a local grammar school which if she passes 11 plus entry exams she can go to that grammar school and not go to the state school that everybody is currently going to including Anita okay so Mina decides to distance herself from Anita and focuses on 11 plus exams studies really hard becomes a good girl that her parents really want her to be and of course her parents are really delighted to see that she's taking exams really seriously and so she decides to take really really seriously these entrance exam to enter this local grammar school for really clever kids however the night before her exam so her parents have to leave on a quick emergency Anita is alone she promises them yet I'm gonna study and then tomorrow I'm gonna be ready for my 11 plus exams everything's gonna be fine so parents leave the trust that she's gonna be okay and whilst she's studying and preparing to go to sleep she hears a knock on her door she realizes that Tracy Anita's younger sister is there Tracy looks distressed and Tracy tells her that she's worried that Anita is being hurt by Sam so she says look I'm really sorry to disturb you Anita so late I don't know who to turn to I think Anita is being hurt by Sam because at this stage Anita and Sam are dating okay and so Anita despite her better judgment decides to listen to Tracy and she follows her in the darkness to the hollow pond okay this marshy area and when they do eventually find where Sam and Anita are they realize that they're having sex this is the first real introduction that Anita has to this kind of world of the oh rather this adult world right so this is the first time she becomes aware of this concept of intercourse okay then when both her and Tracy realize what's going on they're both shocked and then mean Anita and Sam stop then Mina she sees Sam in this particular place okay so still dark time darkness and now the story is becoming really really tense it's getting to its climax is crescendo right so Mina then speaks to Sam she's still angry she's carrying all of this anger about Sam's character and she decides to confront him quite openly and she tells him she confronts him about his racist behavior which is sees as unacceptable however Sam does something really unexpected he kisses her right after what he's done with Anita which obviously Anita sees she's angry and then the now the tensions really really flare up between Anita Sam and especially Tracy okay so Tracy Anita and Sam gets into a huge route a huge fight remember they're still in the darkness in the hollow ponds right no one can see what's going on no one can see what they're doing they're all just hitting each other fighting each other and then Tracy ends up falling into a pond and almost drowning when Tracy falls she's lashing about you know try not to drown Mina gets really terrified so she runs to the nearest mansion that she can see for help and she finds and the elusive person called Harinda P Singh right and another Indian man when they thought that they were the only Indian family so this elusive guy lives in this mansion with his French wife called Miriel who Mina talks to tells him look I have a friend she's drowning in the pond I really need some help he comes out really quickly with Mina in tow and he rescues Tracy from the pond then once Tracy's rescued and the police come Tracy falsely accuses Anita and Sam okay so she falsely accuses them and now this full side of her comes out because she actually wants to see his sister and Sam being arrested okay so Tracy tells the police that Anita and Sam pushed her into the pond deliberately but when Mina is then questioned for her statement she decides to tell the truth she decides that she's going to turn over a new leaf and actually she tells the truth she says Tracy's lying and this rescues Anita and Sam from any possible prison time okay so Nina so Mina decides to do the right thing and the story ends with Harinda P Singh who's very wealthy he buys the house off Mina's family and not only does Mina pass her 11 plus exams but her family decide to sell the house to Harinda P Singh and then move out of tollington okay so this is basically the main sequence of events that happen summarized here in this mind map and as I said I think this is a really great story of course it's a very dense novel so if you find that you're getting really lost in the detail and finding it really hard to remember the key events that happened make sure you just rewatch this mind map in this video and then refresh your memory on the key events so thanks so much guys and I hope this video helped