Age
As the title suggests, time is an important imagery in this memoir. The genre invites that to be the case, because Moody is simply writing from her own memory and point of view. One might say she is reporting a narrative, not constructing one from scratch. The way she chooses to frame the story is as an exposé of her life through time. She starts in her youth, which now has an idyllic, dreamlike quality because she lived in the country as a farmer's daughter without a care in the world. The story is like an arrow shot at an angle; when it gets to where it's going, Moody lives in the city as a justice warrior in the Civil Rights movement.
Race
To Moody, the discovery of racial injustice was a breach of innocence, which means that it colored her perception of adult life and reality. Her innocence with regard to injustice, having been raised somewhat far away from the unfortunate truth of American racism, makes the issue seem perplexing and obviously wrong to Moody. She is indoctrinated by society to believe she is worth less than white people, but instead of adopting that point of view, she stakes her identity on justice and she gives her life to fighting for equal legal rights and equal treatment of her community.
Violence and death
If this memoir were completely fictitious, the reader would clearly notice that Moody's opinions about justice are tested against her sense of fear. In order to play the salvific role that Civil Rights leaders have to play in order to bring change, she must accept the likelihood of abuse, attack, assault, and death. She has to sacrifice her sense of safety and life a life of paranoid awareness. One of the most concrete moments of this imagery occurs when the young man is murdered for whistling at a white girl. Another important moment is Moody's revelation that she is on the Ku Klux Klan's hit list.
Organization and society
Moody responds to the chaotic elements of life, like hatred, injustice, and violence, and she turns her hopes toward organization and the hope for a better society. This leads to an imagery experience that grows from Moody's participation in local clubs at school (participation which led to serious violence while the police stood by and did not protect them), through her participation with the NAACP, eventually blossoming with her participation with the Civil Rights movement. She is a warrior for order and justice.
