Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

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Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Introduction

In the monograph[1] Coming of age in Mississippi, the main character in the story experiences a new thing in her life. Anne is born in a humble background, her family lives in a two-room shack on a plantation; the shacks do not have electricity or tapped water. She notices that the house to the owner of the plantation on the other hand has both. As her parents work at the plantation, her eight year old uncle George Lee has to baby sit Anne and her younger sister. One of the days, he is left behind to baby-sit; he tries scaring his sisters but accidentally sets the wallpaper on fire. The fire, death of a friend and fretfulness over money made Anne’s dad leave his family for an affair with Florence, who happens to be a lighter skinned black woman. Life does not seem easy for Anne and her family as they move in and out of the houses within the next six years. Her mother Toosweet is a waitress in a café for blacks and serves as a maid in white families (Moody 234). Her family sometimes goes without food. Anne performs excellently in school and by fourth grade, she equally has to make money and support her family so she takes on a part-time job where she cleans houses for white people; she does this until she completes high school.

Analysis

During her teenage years, Anne is popular among the boys in her school and in her community. Her popularity among the boys enables her to be elected as the homecoming queen. Her mother also gets into a romantic relationship with Raymond Davis with whom she has four children. She happens to be darker than the Raymond’s family that makes Raymond’s mother to look down upon her. The newfound home is enticing to Anne and she is even more marveled with the Church she attends with the Raymond’s despite the conflicts she has with her mother on her refusal to go to their old church.

An analysis of the background shows that her upbringing made her yearn for recognition in the society. Her status in the society caused her to move from the family to live with her dad. Her background makes her ask herself if there really are differences between the blacks and white, she hardly understood, why the blacks cleaned houses for the whites and never saw the reverse happening. This later on makes her join the National Association for the Advancement of the colored people (NAACP) as much as it was not approved in rural Mississippi. This is the same in the case Martin Luther King Jr who fights for the civil rights movement for the black citizens. Anne begins to wonder how the association would help her in the quest to overthrow racial inequalities (Smith 135). She has a great passion for the civil rights movements. We note that Anne changes her name from Essie Mae to Anne Moody. This shows how much she wants to detach herself from her past, poverty and the racism during this time. As she grew up, she became extremely conscious of the racial inequalities, with her indulged effort in the movement the government had taken in the proposal for better schools for the blacks. She graduates from high school in the late 1950’s but none of her family members attends the graduation. This shows that her active participation in the civil rights movement made her break away from her family ties. This loss of unity[2] is one of universal aspects in the Coming of age in Mississippi.

Anne is frustrated by the African disunity that earns them injustice and they are comfortable. As much as she may want to improve the injustices, it still is so difficult if not impossible to make the Africans aware of their rights and privileges. It amazes her that lighter skinned black’s segregate themselves from the darker skinned ones even when they are both subjugated by the whites. They make the power of prejudice divide them instead of uniting them. There was also discrimination between the rich and the poor; she suffers as she experiences all prejudices. When she is offered the chance to attend TougalooCollege, she almost declines the offer because of the racial discrimination. In college, she is faced with discrimination from the whites and the light-skinned blacks but to her astonishment, there were others who were nice to her. She acknowledges that not all members in these groups are undependable. She also realizes that her pessimistic attitude would have cost her important prospects in her life.

When Anne mentions that there are times when her family slept without food this describes the severe poverty in which they were living in. She mentions that they would eat bread and beans or scraps brought home by her mother from the white families she served as a maid. Although they are not entirely deprived of food, one notices that even when they eat table scraps, its not that they could afford but that they were leftovers brought home by the mother. The food here shows the social class that differed between the whites and the blacks. As one reads on the Coming of age in Mississippi, he is able to distinguish the mean whites from the generous ones.

The main character Anne is symbolic in this monograph as she grows up it shows the same relevance to the civil rights movement. As she grew up it was hard for her to understand the difference between the whites and blacks, she later on grows up and actively participates in the National Association for the Acceptance of Colored People NAACP. This movement not only with activism[3] but begins to engage itself in lawsuits to defend Blacks (Moody 67). This led to the prosecution of the murderers of Emmet Till who was murdered because he whistled at a white woman. Anne realizes that the future is in the hands of the young generation.

We realize the gradual change in the way Anne dresses; her father buys her a gown to wear to her homecoming and she describes this occasion as the most memorable moment in her youth. The gown symbolizes her transition from childhood to adulthood where she wears tight jeans. This shows her maturity from a girl to a woman. As an activist, Anne distributes clothes to the needy blacks. This shows her independence; she no longer clothes only herself and members of her family but stretches a generous hand to her family.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Coming of age in Mississippi is a monograph in which Anne expresses her activism and not her writing skills; Moody thought that nonviolent demonstration like those in which Martin Luther King Jr participated were not effective. Her monograph the coming of age is widely used in lecture by tens of thousands. She is today most popular due to two things: Her being one of the students that demanded to be served Woolworths Counter sit-in in and her monograph. She compared to the likes of Martin Luther King Jr despite her social class. She is believed to be a direct voice to the blacks.

Works Cited

Smith, Jennifer. Nonfiction Classics for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Nonfiction Works. Detroit: Gale Group / Thomson Learning, 2002. Print

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi an Autobiography by Anne Moody. New York: Dell, 1976. Print.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. New York, NY: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2004. Print.

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