Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography that was written by Anne Moody in 1968. I was surprised, how deeply the book touched my heart right from the very beginning.
The book is divided into four parts, such as Childhood, High School, College and The Movement, and 25 chapters. Every part of it describes a certain and very important period of life of Essie Mae. So we observe a four-year-old girl at the beginning of the nonfiction, while in the end she is a beautiful young girl aging over twenty.
This memoir describes a few very important conflicts and problems that existed many centuries ago in the history of mankind and are real even nowadays. Thus, you can reveal the problem of racism in the course of the whole book, when Essie Mae Moody takes part in the civil rights defense. Another conflict is a divorce due to faithlessness (Diddly Moody and Toosweet Davis, who are the parents of Essie Mae). The next conflict is people cruelty, when George Lee (Toosweet young brother) must take care of the younger girls during the day while he is a child himself, because he is only eight years old. The other incident has happened, when Essie Mae’s father beats her so violent that she can neither sit, nor stand. And it is because guilty George Lee blamed four-year-old Essie Mae in setting the fire in her house (Moody 4). There are many violent cases described in the book, as murders of the Negroes, putting them into jail, burning entire families, etc. The other conflict is a conflict between children and parents. Thus, Annie’s mother and her other relatives did not support her in the civil rights movement. They even did not come to her graduation from the college. There is one more problem, described as a conflict within Negroes, such as between lighter-skinned blacks (mulattos) and darker-skinned blacks.
There are two main themes in the nonfiction. One is maturation of Essie Mae from a child, who did not notice and then did not understand the distinction between blacks and whites, to the willful gorgeous young girl, who participated in the civil rights movement. The other one is relations between whites and black that led to the civil rights movement finally.
Essie Mae was born in a poor family of black people. She was brave, smart and hard-working. She had to start working since she was nine to help her family to survive after her father left them, because of the other woman. When her sister Adline was one year old, and Junior was born, the family lived in the wagon, and then moved to live at Aunt Cindy with her six children. When Essie Mae is five, she has to go to Mount Pleasant School, a Baptist church (Moody 10). There she met cruelty of Reverend Cason. Essie Mae liked her kind grandfather Moody very much, who gave them some money. But he died soon because he was sick. When a girl is seven, she and her sister and her brother played with the other children first time (Moody 25). Moody describes severe poverty of the most blacks during the whole nonfiction. For instance, Essie Mae wanted skates for Christmas from her mom very much, but Tossweet could not afford it. “We didn't get anything but a couple of apples and oranges.” (Moody 25)
Once there was an incident at the cinema that had places for blacks and whites separated. The children stayed with their white friends, Katie and Bill, at the area for whites. When Toosweet discovered that, she was furious. She yelled at her children and brought them back home at once. That event helped Essie Mae open her eyes for the distinction between whites and blacks. “I now realized that not only were they better than me because they were white, but everything they owned and everything connected with them was better than what was available to me” (Moody 26). But the girl did not understand why. Even a game “A Doctor”, when Essie Mae examined the whole bodies of the children did not help to discover the reason.
Moody makes accents on the poverty by describing the places, where the family lived. So, the first house did not have much furniture and even wallpapers. Moreover, many places, where they lived in, did not have even facilities inside. First time the girl used a real bathroom was in the house of her employer’s family, at Johnsons. She stayed there with pleasure, because it has nice furniture, “soft music playing on the radio” and other things that her place never had (Moody 29).
There are a few awkward situations concerning Essie Mae’s new place. When the family moved from the whites to their own house, built by Raymond (Toosweet’s new husband), he bought a mule to plant the cotton. But the mule was so old that his work nearly killed him. At that time, Essie Mae’s mother and Raymond prayed for mule’s life, while the girl asked God about the death of it. It was because she did not want to leave her job at Mrs. Claiborne. The other absurd situation was, when there was no rain to come pouring down planted the cotton. While Toosweet and Raymond prayed for rain, Essie Mae prayed for the sun, because she was afraid to die in the field from sunstroke. Nevertheless, Raymond wanted a better life for his family.
Once, Essie Mae’s name has been changed by accident. To graduate from school student had to bring their birth certificates. Essie Mae’s had got the new copy of the document, because the original burnt in the fire, but there was new name, Annie Mae. The girl did not like her previous name, so maybe her desire about the name was so strong that it was changed suddenly, though her mother was not happy about that.
After school was ended Essie Mae left Centreville and moved to her uncle Ed for summer, because she could not stay there anymore due to all those murders, especially after the Taplin family was burned in their own house. Once, a young girl moved to New Orleans to earn more money as a waitress during the summer. Instead of that, she was hired to a big chicken factory. “There were many black workers there. Some of them looked as dead as the chickens hanging before them.” (Moody 144)
Essie Mae “had received a full-tuition scholarship” to study at Tougaloo College (Moody 212). She did not have enough money to finish her study, but she struggled and worked hard. She joined SNCC and canvassed on the weekends. Thus, the young girl was involved into the defense of the Negroes more and more.
In the book, we see the contrasts. For example, in spite of racial discrimination, some whites were good toward Essie Mae, and some of them nasty. For instance, some employers taught the girl many useful things, as serving the table; cooking the food, she never ate before; allowed using their bathroom and even eating with them. At the same time, I remember the horror that the young girl with her friend went through. It happened, when they were waiting for a bus to Tougaloo at the station, where they were frightened by the mob of whites.
Toosweet is a bit contrary to Essie Mae. She is described in the book as a nice woman, who is having many children. She had two husbands and did her best to supplement her family. Essie Mae considered her mother as a very beautiful woman. “She was slim, tall, and tawny-skinned, with high cheekbones and long dark hair. She was by and far the liveliest woman on the plantation and Daddy used to delight in her” (Moody 8). Though, the woman has not simple relationship with her oldest daughter Essie Mae. Thus, she never wanted to explain the girl the racial distinctions, struggled to give Essie Mae her name back, did not support her curiosity in such organizations as NAACP, which fought for Negroes’ rights. So being small, the girl described her feelings and fears, as following: “Before Emmet Till's murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me the fear of being killed just because I was black” (Moody 107). Toosweet was sure that all blacks should have been working for whites forever. She did not want to change anything and was afraid for her family, when Essie Mai joined the civil rights movement. Even when the family reunified, the girl did not feel that she belongs to it.
Coming of Age in Mississippi is a difficult book, because of those painful feelings, when you read about cruel actions and people. But at the same time, it is brilliant, because it shows so many brave people, who struggled to death for the rights of their folk.
Works cited
Moody, Anne. Coming Of Age In Mississippi. 1st ed. New York: Bantam Dell, 2011. Print.
