The prologue begins with the following quote from Dick and Jane primers, books U.S. schools used to teach a vast number of children to read in the 1940s. It begins:

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house.

The prologue repeats this quote two more times. The second time there is no punctuation. The third time, it is repeated without punctuation or spacing.

Morrison could count on the Dick and Jane primers being very familiar to her readers when her book was published. Within her novel's context, however, we might come to understand the story as defamiliarized or disorienting. The Dick and Jane text stands alone without the pictures that usually accompany it. The more we encounter it, the harder it becomes to understand.

A white audience would begin to see how odd and alienating this familiar but racist text might be from the perspective of a Black child. It describes, as though normal, an all-white suburban world in which nuclear families live in pretty houses. The non-white, non-middle class world is completely erased.

We also learn that Jane wears a "pretty red dress" to play in and is looking for someone to play with. Jane's lack of a playmate might cause us to question this seemingly perfect world, where although her parents laugh and smile, it takes a long time for Jane to find companionship.