Anne Moody Analysis

In the coming of age in Mississippi, the protagonist Essie Mae who also goes by the name Anne Moody narrates her story of growing up in the poor south. There are many conflicts that Moody faces throughout her childhood. The prominent issue of prejudice and white supremacy are common themes in the autobiography. As Moody is growing up, I don 't think she really knew that she was poor. While her family was living on the Carter Plantation as hard-working sharecroppers, Moody is often left alone with her sister and her 8-year-old uncle to look after her. The anxiety and stress her family faced led to the separation of Moody 's parents. This was a trying time in history down south. With African-Americans working jobs that didn 't pay hardly enough

They moved around nearly six different times after leaving the Plantation. Her mother worked very hard to keep her children clothed and fed. Moody saw how hard she worked for the first hand when she was a maid to a white woman. Moody also saw that the white woman had a better kitchen, bathroom, and food. The feeling that whites was better than her started to seek into her head. "Sometimes Mama would bring us the white family 's leftovers. It was the best food I had ever eaten. That was when I discovered that white folks ate differently from us" (Moody 29). Moody understanding of racial inequality sparked a quest to find out more. That curiosity to find out what made whites better than her also led her to play doctor with a couple of her white friends. She had them take their clothes off and examined them, as a doctor would do. She checked their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Lastly, she checked their private parts and she found that nothing was different. They were, in fact, all the same, just different colored

His family was very cruel to her mother because she was darker. The fact that these lighter skinned African Americans believed they were better confused Moody. They would treat darker skin African Americans poorly, but whites of the south treated them all with the same cruelty. Furthermore, we see what Moody faces when she begins to work for different white people. Some eat with her, treat her as an equal, and encourage her to go to college. There were other families who were active members of the KKK and tried to frame her. The activity of the KKK began to rise, as it grew more eminent in her town. The anger Moody felt would later lead her to be apart of the Civil Rights Movement. Moody would rather fight the system than to abide by them as her family did growing up. On page 136 Moody expresses her feelings on how she “hated Negroes. I hated them for not standing up and doing something about the murders. In fact, I think I had a stronger resentment toward Negroes for letting the whites kill them than toward the whites”(Moody