The Coming of age in Mississippi Essays - , Term Papers

The Coming Of Age In Mississippi I have read a few slave narratives and similar types of biographies, top of the list were Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglas and Sojourner Truth, now I can add a favorite, Coming of Age in Mississippi. The narrator, Anne Moody, tells the story and portrays her life up to age twenty-four at the end of the book. As a poor Black girl growing up in rural Wilkerson County, Mississippi, during the civil rights movement of the 1940's and 1950's, Anne, called Essie Mae in the story, always sought a purpose for her life. She overcomes the obstacles of discrimination, hunger, poverty, and abuse as she struggles to survive. The story begins when Anne is 4 year old child. From the beginning I realize that she is neglected as a child. Essie?s mother, Mama aka Toosweet Davis, strives to take care of her children. Her and Essie?s father, Dill ?Diddly? Moody are sharecroppers working for a white farmer. During the early 1930s, sharecropping initially arose as a compromise between Blacks desire land and planters? demand for labor discipline. Out of the conflict on the plantations, new systems of labor emerged in the different regions of the South. This system allowed each Black family to rent a part of the plantation, with the crop divided in between the worker and owner. Eventually , sharecropping came to dominate the South. George Lee, Toosweet?s younger brother is forced to look after Anne and Adline, the youngest daughter at the time, when he is only eight years old, while their parents are working. Her brother is very cruel and abusive. He hits the girls and accidentally sets the wallpaper on fire when h e tries to scare them with matches. Unfortunately Essie bears the blame. This seems to happen often in her life, as she doesn?t have much choice to speak for herself. Early on, her family was broken apart after Toosweet long suspected Anne?s father, has an affair Florence, the ?High Yellow? widow of his best friend; this destroys his marriage with Toosweet. This not the first, time the family breaks apart. Her mother moved the family several times throughout her childhood working as a maid for various white families, as did Anne, in order to help with her family?s income. This story gave a genuine actualization of what it means to be Black. Early on, Toosweet encourages Anne?s to do her best in school. Unlike her younger siblings, she is very smart, timid, determined, and inquisitive. In the story when Anne sits at the table for dinner with the Claibornes, they thought of her as intelligent, average, and were obviously impressed. This was symbolic of Anne realizing the differences and similarities between Whites and Blacks. In addition to being dirt poor, the Moody family struggled to even provide food for them. They rarely ate anything other than beans and bread. Anne s parents worked six days a week, affording them little time to spend with their family. After that, she ate with them every time and learned a lot from them because they started treating her like their own child. It was obvious Anne liked the attention she was getting there, because it was almost nonexistent at home, unless her mom was in a good mood. Toosweet disliked this treatment her daughter was receiving arguing that Black and White is not the same. Similar to her mother Toosweet, Anne was a very private person, and her withheld feelings which often led to emotional breakdowns. In many ways Toosweet symbolizes the older generation?s resistance to change in her time. She also makes that resistance seem very understandable. Because Toosweet?s attitude toward Whites, Anne was usually afraid to ask her mother questions about what is going on around her. Through most of her childhood experiences, she learns the social significance of race and gender on her own because her mother avoids confronting the issue because she feels society cannot be changed but eventually, it did. Just as the civil rights movement was maturing in the early 1950s, Anne also was maturing as a young woman. She was also becoming increasingly conscious of racial inequalities. The civil rights movement took place