Turning Points In Anne Moody's Coming Of Age In Mississippi

To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
The turning points in Anne Moody’s life reside in the transitions between childhood, high school, college, and her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. In her childhood, Moody begins to question the reasons why blacks are treated as less than whites, when the only differing feature between the two is skin color. Moreover, she begins to wonder why lighter skinned blacks hold themselves at a higher

She leaves behind her family in order to pursue what she believes is the greater good. She leaves behind a family of nine, living in extreme poverty, to live with her biological father—who runs out on her at a young age to satisfy his need to feel big and important, simply based on anxieties about the hardships around him. Moody comes from a highly difficult and stressful situation, but she stands as the only hope for her starving family and leaves them behind for a life of scholarship and opportunity. This memoir leaves the reader with a sense of guilt for Moody’s decisions, and one may even argue that these decisions happened in vain, as the movement never made a massive impact on race relations. Unfortunately for Moody, she would continue to witness atrocious hate crimes up until the year of her