Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Free as a Bird
Freedom.
It's a good George Michael song, and it also happens to be super important in this book. See, in literature, especially African-American literature, flight usually symbolizes freedom. In her imagination, Cassie is free to go anywhere and do anything.
Question: What is Cassie flying away from? Her family's problems, is one answer. But more broadly, she's flying away from something bigger: oppression.
Oppression is the opposite of freedom and flight, and it's also a familiar theme in African-American literature, especially in stories about slavery. Slavery was long gone in the U.S. by the time Cassie was born, but remember she's living before Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and all the other heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.
Picturing herself as a person who could fly was a powerful act of imagination. It was symbolic of Cassie's ability to transcend all the forces that tried to hold her—and other African Americans—back.