How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[They] did not wish to see the crying, crying girls split in two parts by their tight jeans, screaming at the top of their high, high heels, straining against the pull of their braids and the fluorescent combs holding their hair. (7.1)
When Son first gets to New York, the first thing he notices is the prostitutes standing on the street corners. He finds it hard to look at these women because many of them are black and are selling their bodies to white men. If it's a tough life for black men, it's doubly tough for black women.
Quote #5
They stood around the room, jostling each other gently, gently—there wasn't much room—revealing one breast and then two and Jadine was shocked." (9.185)
Jade is shocked to find herself visited by visions of black women when she's staying in Son's hometown of Eloe, Florida. She's even more shocked when these women start pulling out their breasts in front of her. The breasts in this case symbolize the way that these women want Jade to give into her traditional gender role and become a mother. But this isn't what Jade wants out of life.
Quote #6
That twenty-five-year-old face looked twenty-six and she had not been keeping up the regimen that held her at the twenty-year-old mark. (9.283)
As someone who works as a model, Jade has to maintain a very strict beauty regimen in order to keep herself looking twenty years old. When this regimen starts to wane, though, she starts losing gigs. After all, modeling agencies like for women to look very young. Men, on the other hand, can always get away with looking a little older.