#     Quote      Reaction
1     
pg. 8 Chap. 1:
"The sounds of the new morning had been
replaced with grumbles about cheating houses,
weighted scales, snakes, skimpy cotton and dusty
rows. In later years I was to confront the
stereotyped picture of gay song-singing cotton
pickers with such an inordinate rage that I was
told even by fellow blacks that my paranoia was
embarrassing. But I had seen the fingers cut by
the mean little cotton boils, and I had witnessed
the backs and shoulders and arm and legs
resisting any further demands."     

The importance of this quote is really integral to
the rest of the book. To be able to criticize
something you should have experienced it. This
passage shows that Maya has experienced the
non-privilege of being a Negro during the thirties,
and experienced it at a young age. Maya wrote
that she later confronted the stereotype, She had a
right to because of her previous position.
2     
pg.14 chap. 2
"Bailey and I decided to memorize a scene from
The Merchant of Venice , but realized that
Momma would question us about the author and
that we'd have to tell her that Shakespeare was
white, And it wouldn't matter to her whether or
not he was dead. So we chose 'The Creation' by
James Weldon Johnson "     

This excerpt is crucial because it puts yet another
facet on segregation. Really the blacks and whites
were both afraid of each other equally. The only
difference was that the whitefolks were in a
position to act on those fears.
3     
pg.25 chap 4.
"In Stamps the segregation was so complete that
most Black children didn't really, absolutely know
what whites looked like. Other than they were
different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was
included the hostility of the powerless against the
powerful, the poor against the rich, The worker
against the worked for, and the ragged against the
well dressed.
I remember never believing that whites were
really real."     

The first line really does a good job of summing
up the situation in Stamps but the key section of
this quotation is the very last line. "I remember
never believing that whites were really real."
This statement really makes the whole situation
clear in that it really brings home how someone
can think that an entire race of people don't exist.
4     
pg.48 chap 7
"The judge asked that Mrs. Henderson be
subpoenaed, and when Momma arrived and said
that she was Mrs. Henderson, The judge , the
bailiff, and other whites in the audience laughed.
The judge had really made a gaffe calling a black
woman Mrs."     

Really, this quote here reflects the depth of whites
hatred of blacks. Even something as simple as
being called Ms. was considered inappropriate for
Negroes and was used to further demoralize.


5     
pg. 52 chap 8
" The gifts opened the door to questions that
neither of us wanted to ask. Why did they send us
away? and What did we do so wrong? So Wrong
Why, at three and four , did we have tags put on
or arms to be sent by train alone with only the
porter to look after us?     

This passage conveys that even though it was a
different time and place, some feeling are always
the same . These questions opened up by the
presents are the kind every adopted child asks
themselves at one time or another.
6     
pg. 60 chap 9
"Our father left St. Louis a few days later for
California, and I was neither glad nor sorry. He
was a stranger and if he chose to leave with a
stranger it was all of one piece."     

This remark is crucial to a deeper understand of
Maya's personality when she was young. Most
people would take the days spent in travel with
their father and form a link to him no matter how
fragile or temporary. But Maya has made a
decision whether she knew it or not to not think
about her father because of the pain that would
bring.


7     
pg 63 chap 10
"When we enrolled in Toussant L'Ouverture
Grammar School, we were struck by the
ignorance of our schoolmates and the rudeness of
our teachers. Only the vastness of the building
impressed us; not even the white school in Stamps
was as large."     

The communal southern black experience is very
evident in this comment. When encountered with
something larger than she is used to she bases her
comparison on what the "whitefolk" have and not
what she had.

8     
pg.81 chap 12
"Could I tell her now? The terrible pain assured
me that I couldn't. What he did to me and what I
allowed must have been very bad if already God
had let me hurt so much. If Mr. Freeman was
gone, did that mean Bailey was out of danger?
And if I told him would he still love me?     

This of course is a pivotal point in the book.
Maya is very distraught at this point. She knows
that what happened was wrong but not why or
how it was wrong except for the fact that it was.
9     
pg 86 chap13
"Obviously I had forfeited my place in heaven
forever, And I was as gutless as the doll i had
ripped to pieces ages ago.     

This is yet another example of how Maya doesn't
fully understand what's going on. She thought
that Mr. Freeman was dead because she had told a
lie. She didn't realize he died because of the
terrible crime he had committed
10     
pg.92 chap 14
"People accepted my unwillingness to talk as a
natural outgrowth of a reluctant return to the
south. An indication that I was pinning for the
high times I'd had in the big city."     

Going back to Stamps and living there happened
to be exactly what Maya needed at that time in her
life. She need to be in a place where nobody knew
of the atrocity she had been through, not to have
it stare her in the face with every pitying look or
glance she received.
11     
pg. 102 chap 15
"When Bailey tried to interpret the words with :
"Whitefolks use 'by the way' to mean while were
on the subject,' Momma reminded us that
"whitefolks" mouths were most in general loose
and their words were an abomination before
Christ"     

The reason this quotation is pertinent to the book
is that it shows that black people could hate whites
just as deeply as the whites hated the blacks. This
comment if aimed at black people sounds like
something you would here at a Klu Klux Klan
meeting.
12     
pg. 109 chap 15
"Every person I knew had the hellish horror of
being "called out of their name". It was a
dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that
could be loosely construed as insulting because of
centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs,
dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.     

Here is seen yet another example of how morally
important the little things that we take for granted
are, such as what you are called. I personally
don't take being called a derogatory name badly
but if my race had for centuries been humiliated
and oppressed with those names I would certainly
be more than offended.
13     
pg 118-119 chap 17
"I laughed too, but not at the hateful jokes made
against my people. I laughed because, except that
she was white the big movie star looked just like
my mother. Except that she lived in a big
mansion with a thousand servants she lived just
like my mother. And it was funny to of the
whitefolks not knowing that the star they were
adoring could be my mother's twin, except that
she was white and my mother was prettier. much
prettier."     

This quote reveals just how much Maya's mother
had won her over. Having a star look like our
mother might not seem like such a big deal to
those of us who are with our parents but to Maya
this was the only link she had to her mother and
unlike the link she refuse make with her father,
She clung to this one with all her strength.
14     
pg 136 chap 19
Champion of the world. A black boy. Some Black
mother's son. He was the strongest man in the
world. People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia
and ate candy bars like Christmas. Some of the
men went behind the store and poured white
lightning in their soft drink bottles, and a few of
the bigger boys followed them. Those who were
not chased away came back blowing their breath
in front of themselves like proud smokers.     

Despite the fight in later years to toss the
stereotype of muscular, sports adept Negroes this
was a victory back then. Back then any victory
(no matter how small or stereotypical) was
grasped at and held like a proverbial newborn.
15     
pg 254 chap 30
Odd that the homeless children, the silt of the war
frenzy, could initiate me into the brotherhood of
man. After hunting down unbroken bottles with a
white girl from Missouri, A Mexican girl from
Los Angeles and a black girl from Oklahoma, I
was never again to sense myself so solidly outside
the pale of the human race. The lack of criticism
by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a
tone of tolerance for the rest of my life.     

In this paragraph right here we see Maya Angelou
as we now know her. Maya was always mature
for age but the month spent with this community
was the thing that finally opened her up to become
a full adult. This experience also taught her how
she wanted to live her life; with tolerance and
acceptance.