Childishness
The use of imagery in the book kicks off with a recollection of the author’s childhood. Two different events are recalled but both are based on cementing the impression that by the tender age of four, the author had already rightfully earned herself a reputation for being smart and feisty. The first incident goes as planned, but the second veers wildly from the intended result. The point of the imagery in the recollection of these two events from her youth is to reveal the personality of the author through events rather than simply to describe the defining characteristics of her youth. “I could take adult indulgence too far when my need to shine blurred my sense of the occasion. At a dinner party not long after, where the adults were more interested in each other than in children, I waited for a break in their talk, then announced, `Sometimes I forget to wipe myself.’ The laughter came, but only after a short silence, and I saw the guests looking at each other before they looked at me. I realized I was being more tolerated than appreciated.”
The Residents of Negroland
By the end of the book, even the most blissfully ignorant person will know exactly what the constituency of Negroland is in great detail. The imagery in this example effectively uses the repetition of parallel construction of sentences to cement in the reader’s mind the overriding message being put forth. And that message is that citizenship in Negroland does not come as a birthright, but rather must be earned by first learning—and then practicing—the lessons of residency that they were constantly being taught: “Most whites knew little about us; only a few cared to know. We were taught that we embodied the best that was known and thought in—and of—Negro life. We were taught to resent the relative lack of attention our achievements garnered. We were taught that we were better than the whites who looked down on us—that we were better than most whites, period.”
Good Negro Girls
The efficiency of imagery as a literary device is also on display revealing the meaning of the term “Good Negro Girls” through implication rather than explicit explanation. The concept is explored through an expansive analysis of the particulars of precise details which cover multiple pages, but an immediate visual image is effectively established which conveys the behavior required to be a Good Negro Girl by illustrating the homogeneity of their physical appearance. It is an abject lesson in the subtle ways in which appearance can determine behavior. The author writes “Between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, Good Negro Girls mastered the rigorous vocabulary of femininity. Gloves, handkerchiefs, pocketbooks for each occasion. Good diction for all occasions; skin care (no ashy knees or elbows); hair cultivation (a ceaseless round of treatments to eradicate the bushy and nappy). Manners to please grandparents and quell the doubts of any white strangers loitering to observe your behavior in schools, stores, and restaurants.”
