The language of the novel is as local and natural as the land. Big Ma is “the color of a pecan shell,” and Mama always “smelled of sunshine and soap.” When Papa explains to Christopher-John why Mama’s firing is so hard on her, he says that “she’s born to teaching like the sun is born to shine.” The first-person narration by Cassie is easy and consistent (if often adult in its vocabulary) and, like the conversations Cassie quotes, captures the Black dialect of rural Depression Mississippi.