I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Chapters 18–23

I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

The impermanence of a collapsible church added to the frivolity, and their eyes flashed and winked and the girls giggled little silver drops in the dusk while the boys postured and swaggered and pretended not to notice.

The mean whitefolks was going to get their comeuppance. Wasn’t that what the minister said, and wasn’t he quoting from the words of God Himself? They had been refreshed with the hope of revenge and the promise of justice.

They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden.

The amount and variety of foods would have found approval on the menu of a Roman epicure.

However, in the ecumenical light of the summer picnic every true baking artist could reveal her prize to the delight and criticism of the town.

I had been thinking of yesterday’s plain invitation and the expeditious way Louise and I took care of it.

But on that onerous day, oppressed beyond relief, my own mortality was borne in upon me on sluggish tides of doom.

With an imperious gesture, he snatched the gray cloth off the open flap and gazed downward into the mystery.

The cheeks had fallen back to the ears and a solicitous mortician had put lipstick on the black mouth.

Somewhere in my fatalism I had expected to die, accidentally, and never have the chance to walk up the stairs in the auditorium and gracefully receive my hard-earned diploma. Out of God’s merciful bosom I had won reprieve.

Finding my seat at last, I was overcome with a presentiment of worse things to come.

We were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous.

He finished, and since there was no need to give any more than the most perfunctory thank-you’s, he nodded to the men on the stage, and the tall white man who was never introduced joined him at the door.

Henry had been a good student in elocution. His voice rose on tides of promise and fell on waves of warnings.