The three Gaither sisters board a plane from Brooklyn to Oakland to spend a month with their estranged mother, Cecile.

Cecile arrives late to the Oakland airport wearing a disguising hat and sunglasses, and rushes the girls out without helping them.

The girls discover that Cecile lives in a normal green stucco house, not the street or slum Big Ma always described.

Cecile refuses to cook for her daughters and sends the three girls alone to buy Chinese takeout for dinner.

Three Black Panthers pressure Cecile to use her printing press; she agrees only if they take her daughters to their center each day.

The girls arrive at the People's Center and discover the Black Panthers run a free breakfast and education program for children.

Crazy Kelvin confronts Fern about carrying a white doll; Sister Mukumbu intervenes and welcomes the Gaither sisters to the center.

Vonetta secretly colors Fern's beloved white doll with a black marker, ruining it, while Cecile refuses to intervene in the fight.

Delphine convinces Cecile to allow her into the kitchen and cooks the first home-cooked meal for her hungry sisters.

Delphine learns about teenager Bobby Hutton's murder by Oakland police and declares she will keep her sisters away from the center and rally.

Cecile overrules Delphine's decision and forces all three girls to continue attending the People's Center.

The girls take a trip to San Francisco, encountering hippies and a racist souvenir shop owner, while Fern quietly witnesses something she refuses to share.

The girls return home from San Francisco to find police officers arresting Cecile and two Black Panthers outside her house.

The Gaither sisters perform Cecile's poem at the rally, and Fern follows with her own poem exposing Crazy Kelvin as a police informant.

Cecile surprises her daughters at the rally after being released from jail, publicly acknowledges them as her own, and accepts their embrace at the airport.

The Gaither sisters fly to Oakland to spend a month with Cecile, the mother who abandoned them years earlier. Cecile proves distant and difficult, refusing to cook for them and handing them over to the Black Panthers' community center each day. At the center, the girls learn about black history and activism while tensions at home escalate around Cecile's refusal to act like a traditional mother. Delphine tries to protect her sisters by pulling them away from a potentially dangerous political rally, but Cecile overrules her completely. After witnessing Cecile's arrest, the girls clean her trashed kitchen and perform her poem at the rally, where Fern's own poem exposes a Black Panther as a police informant. Cecile is released in time to claim her daughters publicly at the rally, and the family shares a final embrace before the girls fly home.

The headline events of Delphine's summer with her estranged mother in Oakland.

Big Ma asks a stranger in the airport waiting area to watch over the three Gaither sisters during their flight to Oakland.

Delphine shoves past Vonetta to glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge through the window, causing the stewardess to scold all three sisters.

A stranger offers Fern coins for the girls' good behavior at the airport; Delphine is offended and tries to reject the gesture.

A cab driver calls Cecile 'Zilla,' and at the bus stop she hides behind her sunglasses as if ashamed to be seen with her daughters.

Delphine places an expensive collect call to Big Ma from a pay phone after picking up the sisters' first dinner.

Cecile prevents the girls from eating in the kitchen and spreads a tablecloth on the living room floor for their dinner instead.

In the middle of the night, Cecile refuses to call Fern by her name and brusquely delivers her a glass of water.

Sister Mukumbu demonstrates the rotation of the Earth to teach the children that change and revolution are part of the natural order.

Vonetta and Fern embarrass Delphine at the center by announcing they only came to Oakland to eat breakfast and meet their mother.

While counting Black Panther newspapers, Delphine reads them without paying and loses count; Sister Mukumbu catches her and makes her buy a copy.

Delphine stares at Hirohito and calls him 'China boy'; Eunice corrects her and hints that something terrible happened to his father.

The girls use tactics learned at the center to formally demand a television from Cecile; she gives them a secondhand radio instead.

Crazy Kelvin publicly describes the Oakland police raid on the Woods' home and Hirohito's father's arrest during a class Hirohito attends.

Cecile places a stool in the kitchen for Delphine and lets her help print the poem 'Movable Type' on the press.

Delphine rides Hirohito's go-kart down a hill at the Woods' house, screaming and laughing freely like a carefree child for once.

From the moment Big Ma sends the girls off with a stranger to watch over them, Delphine's summer is filled with small but telling moments of adjustment and discovery. The girls must navigate Cecile's strange household rules — including eating on the living room floor and being barred from the kitchen — which Delphine reads as evidence of neglect. At the People's Center, Sister Mukumbu's lessons and Crazy Kelvin's blunt teachings push the girls to see themselves and their world differently. Delphine makes social missteps and forms tentative friendships for the first time outside her family, while Vonetta carves out her own social identity. Cecile gradually allows Delphine small moments of connection, like placing a stool in the kitchen and letting her operate the printing press. The summer closes with Delphine riding Hirohito's go-kart down a hill — a rare, uncomplicated burst of childhood joy.

The everyday moments and smaller scenes that filled Delphine's summer in Oakland.

Cecile mutters that she should have gone to Mexico to get rid of the girls, leaving Delphine stunned and confirming her worst fears.

Cecile explains her pen name 'Nzila' means 'the path' in Yoruba and that her poetry belongs to the people, not to fame.

Delphine learns that Vonetta was named after a singer and that a fight over Fern's name was what finally drove Cecile to leave.

Delphine connects Hirohito's father's unjust arrest to her own frightening memory of a racist officer who confronted her family in Alabama.

Vonetta rebels against Delphine's authority and insists she cannot be stopped from performing and attending the upcoming rally.

During the San Francisco trip, Fern secretly watches Crazy Kelvin having an intense conversation with an Oakland police officer who pats him on the back.

When police arrest Cecile, she denies having any children; all three girls immediately claim to be the Clark sisters from down the street.

The girls find Cecile's poem 'I Birthed a Nation' while cleaning the trashed kitchen and decide to perform it at the rally.

Mrs. Woods takes all three Gaither sisters into her home after Cecile's arrest, giving Delphine a rare break from being the family caretaker.

Delphine decides not to tell her father or Big Ma about Cecile's arrest, wanting to protect her chance to finally know her mother.

Children from the People's Center canvas the neighborhood with rally flyers; even Mean Lady Ming agrees to display one in her restaurant.

After the rally, Cecile scolds Delphine for failing to contact their father for an entire week following the arrest.

Cecile tells Delphine her full life story: orphaned at eleven, forced into unpaid labor, and homeless as a teenager who survived by reciting poetry.

Cecile reveals she considered taking Delphine when she left and that she placed Miss Patty Cake in Fern's crib before walking out.

At the airport, Cecile angrily stops a white man from photographing the girls — the first time she has ever defended her daughters.

Beneath the surface of a difficult summer, a series of revelations gradually transform the way Delphine understands her mother and herself. Early shocks — like Cecile's chilling hint that she considered not having the girls at all — give way to deeper discoveries about identity, naming, and the real reason Cecile left. When Cecile is arrested, the girls are forced into the community's care and Delphine must make hard, secret choices about loyalty and who to protect. The rally becomes a turning point for the whole family, as the girls perform their mother's art and Fern publicly exposes a traitor in their midst. A late-night conversation in Cecile's kitchen breaks open the truth about Cecile's painful past and the decision that shaped all their lives. By the time the girls board their flight home, Delphine has accepted her mother's limitations and reclaimed Fern's true name as a way of honoring everything the summer taught her.

The revelations, decisions, and emotional shifts that reshaped Delphine's understanding of herself and Cecile.