Color Me Real (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Joan California Cooper
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Plot: Character study
- Time of Work: The 1980's
- Setting: Rural South, New York, Chicago
- Principal Characters: Era, Minna, Her biological father, George, Her white husband, Reggie
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: African Americans, Discrimination, Husbands, New York, North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Wives, Mothers, Parents and children, Love or romance, South or Southerners, Twentieth century, New York City, Interracial relationships, Marriage, Rural or country life, Chicago, 1980’s, Poverty or poor people, Intermarriage, Illinois
- Locales: South (U.S.), New York, Chicago, IL
The Story
In “Color Me Real,” a third-person narrator relates how Minna, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in a small southern town, is seduced by her white employer and bears him two children, Era and her brother. Because he will not pay her the money he owes her and still insists on sex, Minna uses herbs and roots to make a potion that blinds him and eventually makes him impotent. Despite the way she has been treated, she tends the man until he dies. As the children grow older, she works in a schoolhouse so that they can get an education.
The story's focus...
[The entire page is 1421 words long]
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