How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
On the morning of the first day I started to menstruate, I felt strange in a new way—hot and cold at the same time, with horrible pains running up and down my legs. My mother, knowing what was the matter, brushed aside my complaints and said that it was all to be expected and I would soon get used to everything. Seeing my gloomy face, she told me in a half-joking way all about her own experience with the first step in coming of age, as she called it, which had happened when she was as old as I was. (3.23)
We had to include this quotation. It actually has the phrase "coming of age" in it. Again, we see the word "strange" here. Adolescence is a minefield of strange new sensations, and not all of them are pleasant.
Quote #8
I, during a break for recess, walk over from our schoolyard into the neighboring churchyard to sit on tombstones and gather important information from the other girls on what exactly it was I should do to make my breasts begin growing. Our breasts were, to us treasured shrubs, needing only the proper combination of water and sunlight to make them flourish. (4.11)
The breasts come back again. In this passage, Annie uses a natural metaphor to describe how she and her friends wish their breasts would grow, pointing out the connection between women and nature in this text.
Quote #9
What I was really looking at was my own reflection in the glass, though it was a while before I knew that. I saw myself just hanging there among bolts of cloth, among Sunday hats and shoes […] I saw myself among all these things, but I didn't know that it was I, for I had got so strange. My whole head was so big, my eyes, which were big, too, sat in my big head wide open, as if I had just had a sudden fright. My skin was black in a way I had not noticed before […] on my cheeks were little bumps […] my plaits stuck out in every direction […] I looked old and miserable. (6.12)
Always pay attention to the mirror or looking-glass scenes in books—they're usually pretty important. When Annie catches a sight of her reflection in the store window, she's frightened by what she sees. She's not just having a bad hair day; she's having a bad face day. When she says, "I had got so strange," she is really expressing a sense of estrangement with her own changing body.