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   jrs0330 Teacher
   High School - 11th Grade

   This is a great short story. If you aren't familiar with a little bit of black culture and history in America, it can be difficult to understand where each character is coming from. For the mother and Maggie, their heritage is their daily life. For Dee, it is a political statement.

    

   Let's look at Dee first: her name change, the change in her clothing, her sudden desire to document everything about the humble beginnings she once had makes it fairly clear she was part of the "Black is Beautiful" cultural movement. There are a lot of great websites with information about this extremely influential movement. Try a google search if you haven't heard of it before. She is appalled that Maggie and her mother would put the quilts on the bed, and remember her comments about the butter churn? She tells her "husband" she'll do something artistic with them.

    

   Contrast this to the mother and Maggie, who were never ashamed of their roots to begin with and never really left them. For a specific example, read back over the mother's description of the grooves on the butter churn handle. Also, remember what Maggie said about the quilts: she could remember their grandmother without seeing the quilts everyday.

    

   As to your second question, who has the deepest understanding of it, I think that depends on how you define deep. All three parties respected the items, but their motivations were very different.

    

   Sources:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_is_beautiful

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   Posted by jrs0330 on Monday August 24, 2009 at 3:40 PM