Sex, Gender and Sexuality Theme Analysis

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

When I was described by our playmates as being shit color, he was lauded for his velvet-black skin…And yet he loved me.

He held me so softly I wished he wouldn’t ever let me go. I felt at home.

The Black woman in the south who raises sons, grandsons, and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.

I laughed because, except that she was white, the big movie star looked just like my mother…and it was funny to think of the whitefolks’ not knowing that.

“It looks like Joe Louis is going down.” My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through the slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.

The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste, and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

I patted my son’s body lightly and went back to sleep.