Summary: Chapter 16
Maya takes a job in Mrs. Viola Cullinan’s home at the
age of ten. The cook, Miss Glory, a descendant of the slaves once
owned by the Cullinans, informs Maya that Mrs. Cullinan could not
have children and Maya feels pity for Mrs. Cullinan. One day, one
of Mrs. Cullinan’s friends infuriates Maya when she suggests that
Mrs. Cullinan call Maya “Mary” because “Margaret” is too long. Even worse,
Maya notes, her name is Marguerite, not Margaret. When Mrs. Cullinan
begins calling her Mary, Maya becomes furious. She knows Momma will
not allow her to quit, so she decides she must find a way to get
fired. She deliberately slacks in her work, but to no avail. Maya
then takes Bailey’s advice and breaks some of Mrs. Cullinan’s heirloom
china, making it look like an accident. Mrs. Cullinan drops her
veneer of genteel racism and insults Maya with a racist slur. Upon
hearing Mrs. Cullinan’s sobs and screams, her friends crowd into
the kitchen and one of them asks if “Mary” is responsible. Mrs.
Cullinan screams, “Her name’s Margaret.”
Summary: Chapter 17
One evening, Bailey stays out until well after dark. Willie
and Momma do not mention their concern, but Momma takes Maya with
her to search for Bailey. They find Bailey trudging home, but he does
not offer an explanation for his lateness. He stoically receives
a severe whipping, and Maya notes that for days it seems like Bailey has
no soul. Later Bailey explains to Maya that he was late because he
had seen a movie starring a white actress, Kay Francis, who looked
like Vivian, and he stayed late to watch the movie a second time.
They wait for weeks before another Kay Francis movie comes to the
theater. Maya laughs at the irony of a beloved white actress looking
just like her black mother. The movie delights Maya, but it saddens
Bailey. On the way home, he frightens Maya by dashing across the
tracks in front of an oncoming railway car. Maya wonders if Bailey
would ever jump on one of the trains and go away. A year later,
he boards a boxcar, but succeeds only in stranding himself in Baton
Rouge for two weeks.
Summary: Chapter 18
The annual revival meeting interrupts the harsh daily
existence in Stamps. People from all the black churches attend.
This year, the preacher delivers a sermon admonishing those who
practice false charity. Everyone knows it is a diatribe against
white Christian hypocrisy. They give to poor blacks with the expectation
that the recipient be humble and self-belittling in return. The
sermon promises divine revenge and divine justice.
Afterward, the preacher announces that the unsaved should come
forward and choose which church they want to join. Maya remarks
that no minister has ever worked to gather members for different
churches. She says he is practicing charity. Afterward, everyone
relishes the sensation of righteousness. However, when they pass
a noisy, secular, honky-tonk party, they fall silent and bow their heads,
sensing again the presence of sin in the black world. Nevertheless,
Maya notes that, to an outsider, those who attend the revival and
those who visit the honky-tonk that night both appear to be trying
to escape their harsh lives.
Summary: Chapter 19
My race groaned. It was our people falling.
It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree.
. . . This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back
in slavery and beyond help.
See Important Quotations Explained
People crowd inside the Store to listen to the heavyweight
championship boxing match on the radio, desperately hoping that
Joe Louis, a hero for the black community, will defend his title.
Maya explains that if Louis were to lose, everything racist whites
say about blacks would be true. His loss would represent and justify another
lynching, another raped black woman, another beaten black boy. When
Louis wins the fight, everyone in the Store celebrates with abandon.
Maya says that Louis proves that blacks are the most powerful people
in the world.
Analysis: Chapters 16–19
Maya’s indignation toward Mrs. Cullinan for
presumptuously renaming her attests to Maya’s strong pride in her
self, now revealed in the face of complex racist forces. Mrs. Cullinan
does not bother to learn Maya’s real name, Marguerite, and she chooses
to change it for her own convenience. She does not exhibit violent
racism, but she perpetrates an indignity that American blacks have
faced throughout history. Mrs. Cullinan’s renaming constitutes yet
another form of displacement for Maya, this time racial displacement.
She remarks upon the danger associated with calling a black person
anything that could be loosely interpreted as insulting because
blacks have been labeled negatively for centuries as “niggers, jigs,
dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.” Maya’s reaction to
Mrs. Cullinan’s re-naming exemplifies the subtle forms of resistance
available to American blacks. Maya cannot directly demand recognition
of her identity, but she finds a subversive form of resistance.
This resistance powerfully affects Mrs. Cullinan. By switching back
to Margaret, Mrs. Cullinan believes that she has reasserted her power
over Maya as well as protected the holy name Mary from tarnish.
Essentially, however, she has relinquished the name that was her
symbol of power over Maya. Mary may have been under her control,
but Margaret is not. Maya regains her name and her sense of self.
