The clash of two different worlds is evident through the subtle struggle between the grandmother and her grandchild, the narrator. Almost from their first conversation together, both seek to show the other how superior their world is compared to the world that the other lives in. Da-duh has never left Barbados, which at the time was still developing, and so the stories that her granddaughter shares with her about America are truly overwhelming and strange:

For long moments afterwards Da-duh stared at me as if I were a creature from Mars, an emissary from some world she did not know but which intrigued her and whose power she both felt and feared.

The narrator herself says that she spent most of her time with Da-duh, telling her more and more about life in America:

But as I answered, recreating my towering world of steel and concrete and machines for her, building the city out of words, I would feel her give way.

Through the new world that is being described to her through her granddaughter, Da-duh is unable to cope with or accept the radical change in life that is occurring, and thus her surrender begins.