How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
What a surprise this was to me, that I longed to be back in the place that I came from, that I longed to sleep in a bed I had outgrown, that I longed to be with people whose smallest, most natural gesture would call up in me such a rage that I longed to see them all dead at my feet (1.5).
Isn't it cool how the experience of being in a foreign place can give you a newfound appreciation for people you used to wish were dead? Lucy's realization here also challenges the notion that living in an affluent home in North America is superior to dwelling in her more modest Caribbean home.
Quote #2
I was awakened from this dream by the actual maid, a woman who had let me know right away, on meeting me, that she did not like me, and gave as her reason the way I talked (1.7).
Workers of the world unite! Or not. We might expect that two people in service jobs might join forces or at least be sympathetic to one another. But the maid's intolerance of Lucy's foreign manner of speech is apparently enough to prevent any potential solidarity or bond.
Quote #3
[. . .] the melodies of [the maid's] song were so shallow, and the words, to me, were meaningless. From her face, I could see she had only one feeling about me: how sick to her stomach I made her. And so I said that I knew songs, too, and I burst into a calypso about a girl who ran away to Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, and had a good time, with no regrets (1.11).
Instead of pretending to like music she doesn't dig in order to blend into her new environment, Lucy draws on the music of her own culture to help her through an uncomfortable moment.