An Analysis Of Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

667 Words2 Pages

Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) is a very interesting story. It shows how things were different back in Mississippi. Essie is a teenage girl learning about the different discriminations that is going on in her hometown and state between the whites and blacks. She starts questioning her mother about Emmett Till’s murder. Emmett Till was a fourteen year boy who got killed because he whistled at a woman. When Essie comes home she hears her mother singing a song. Essie starts questioning her mother, but her mother ignores Essie and tells her to go to work, however Essie is not having it because she wants answers. She goes to work and listens to their conversation hoping to learn more about what is going on. Essie is wanting to know and learn about different …show more content…

The song Moody writes “I got a shoe, you got a shoe, All of God’s chillun got shoes, When I get to hebben, I’m gonna put on my shoes, and gonna trump all over God’s hebben, When I get to hebben I’m gonna put on my shoes, and gonna walk all over God’s hebben” (218). The mother is singing about how everyone has got shoes and talking about what is going to happen and what they are going to do when they get to heaven. In this song she does not say that a certain race has got shoes just that everyone has them. She is saying everyone has shoes, everyone is going to get to heaven, and everyone is god’s children. This is showing that everyone is equal and that no one has a higher privilege than anyone else. This song also is showing that she does not want to think about the murder of the boy and she is trying to protect her kids from the bad discrimination that is happening around them by singing and not giving them information. The mother in this story is not trying to hide the kids from society but from the negative in

Open Document