How we cite our quotes: (Story.Section.Paragraph) or (Story.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I don't know why, but the boy seemed to need some encouraging. And I don't know, seem like one way or another you talk to rich white folks and you end up reassuring them. But what the hell, by now I feel something for the boy. (Nineteen Fifty-Five.98)
Gracie Mae has supernatural powers of observation—and she's not afraid to share them with us. She likes Traynor a whole lot, but there are moments of irony like this in their relationship, and she can't understand why she reaches out to him as much as she does. The truth is simple: despite differences in race, income, and fame, there's a mothering side to her that won't let her ignore another person in distress. Even if that distress is different from hers.
Quote #2
She said: "On top of everything else, that man's daddy goes on the t.v. every night and says folks like us ain't even human." It was his daddy who had stood in the schoolhouse door saying it would be over his dead body before any black children would come into a white school. (Lawyer.9)
The young narrator's mother tries to warn her off Bubba, telling her that she's being foolish to think that he could ever love a Black woman. But being 16, the narrator won't have any part of it. She can't look the misery of her situation in the eye—she is, after all, being assaulted by Bubba on the regular. Also, she's not mature enough to understand the social and political realities of the situation: Bubba is a white supremacist who's using her body to feed his privilege. At 16, she's just glad she has someone telling her she's pretty.
Quote #3
There had been many slaves, and though slavery no longer existed, this grandson of former slaveowners held a quaint proprietary point of view where colored people were concerned. He adored them, of course. Not in the present—it went without saying—but at that time, stopped, just on the outskirts of his memory: his grandfather's time. (Elethia.2)
Oh, man. This guy owns the restaurant where Uncle Albert is on display in the front window. It's clear that his "love" of Black people is the same as the "love" some people have for objects they collect. But it does not extend to treating Black people like people.