![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Freeman's death, Maya, threatened by violence, as depicted in Bailey's bug-eyed viewing of a bloated corpse pulled from a pond and lodged in the local jail, is taken to California by Momma, moved from Los Angeles to Oakland and finally to San Francisco's Fillmore district.Įnthralled with San Francisco's cultural mix, she exults: One day - without explanation - the traumatized eight-year-old Maya and her brother Bailey are on the train going back to Stamps, where the "barrenness was exactly what I wanted, without will or consciousness."Īfter achieving partial reprieve from the guilt of Mr. The change, which lasts only a year, ends abruptly. Prohibition, gambling and their related vocations were so obviously practiced that it was hard for me to believe that they were against the law. Louis in the mid-thirties had all the finesse of a gold-rush town. Louis, far from Stamps' backwardness and religiosity, young Maya, bombarded by a titillating, racy newness, studies the contrasts: ![]() No matter how much they had picked, it wasn't enough. Thrust into the threadbare black ghetto of Stamps in 1931, she empathizes with the black substrata, where laborers, fearful of intrusive whites and clinging to Bible-based promises, struggle for survival wages:īrought back to the Store, the pickers would step out of the backs of trucks and fold down, dirt-disappointed, to the ground. Louis, San Francisco, southern California, or Mexico. The variety of locales emphasizes Maya's ability to thrive, whether in the rural, Depression-era South, St. ![]()
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