COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI(ISBN=9780440314882) 下载 pdf 百度网盘 epub 免费 2025 电子版 mobi 在线

Moody's famous autobiography is a classic work on growing up

poor and Black in the rural South. Her searing account of life

before the Civil Rights Movement is as moving as The Color Purple

and as important as And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. "A history of

our time . . . (and) a reminder that we cannot now relax".--Senator

Edward Kennedy.

Part One: Childhood

Part Two: High School

Part Three: College

Part Four: The Movement

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Chapter One

I'm still haunted by dreams of the time we lived on Mr.

Carter's plantation. Lots of Negroes lived on his place. Like Mama

and Daddy they were all farmers. We all lived in rotten wood

two-room shacks. But ours stood out from the others because it was

up on the hill with Mr. Carter's big white house, overlooking the

farms and the other shacks below. It looked just like the Carters'

barn with a chimney and a porch, but Mama and Daddy did what they

could to make it livable. Since we had only one big room and a

kitchen, we all slept in the same room. It was like three rooms in

one. Mama them slept in one corner and I had my little bed in

another corner next to one of the big wooden windows. Around the

fireplace a rocking chair and a couple of straight chairs formed a

sitting area. This big room had a plain, dull-colored wallpaper

tacked loosely to the walls with large thumbtacks. Under each tack

was a piece of cardboard which had been taken from shoeboxes and

cut into little squares to hold the paper and keep the tacks from

tearing through. Because there were not enough tacks, the paper

bulged in places. The kitchen didn't have any wallpaper and the

only furniture in it was a wood stove, an old table, and a

safe.

Mama and Daddy had two girls. I was almost four and Adline was a

crying baby about six or seven months. We rarely saw Mama and Daddy

because they were in the field every day except Sunday. They would

get up early in the morning and leave the house just before

daylight. It was six o'clock in the evening when they returned,

just before dark.

George Lee, Mama's eight-year-old brother, kept us during the day.

He loved to roam the woods and taking care of us prevented him from

enjoying his favorite pastime. He had to be at the house before

Mama and Daddy left for the field, so he was still groggy when he

got there. As soon as Mama them left the house, he would sit up in

the rocking chair and fall asleep. Because of the solid wooden door

and windows, it was dark in the house even though it was nearing

daybreak. After sleeping for a couple of hours, George Lee would

jump up suddenly, as if he was awakened from a nightmare, run to

the front door, and sling it open. If the sun was shining and it

was a beautiful day, he would get all excited and start slinging

open all the big wooden windows, making them rock on their hinges.

Whenever he started banging the windows and looking out at the

woods longingly, I got scared.

Once he took us to the woods and left us sitting in the grass while

he chased birds. That night Mama discovered we were full of ticks

so he was forbidden to take us there any more. Now every time he

got the itch to be in the woods, he'd beat me.

One day he said, "I'm goin' huntin'." I could tell he meant to go

by himself. I was scared he was going to leave us alone but I

didn't say anything. I never said anything to him when he was in

that mood.

"You heard me!" he said, shaking me.

I still didn't say anything.

Wap! He hit me hard against the head; I started to boo-hoo as usual

and Adline began to cry too.

"Shut up," he said, running over to the bed and slapping a bottle

of sweetening water into her mouth.

"You stay here, right here," he said, forcing me into a chair at

the foot of the bed. "And watch her," pointing to Adline in the

bed. "And you better not move." Then he left the house.

A few minutes later he came running back into the house like he

forgot something. He ran over to Adline in the bed and snatched the

bottle of sweetening water from her mouth. He knew I was so afraid

of him I might have sat in the chair and watched Adline choke to

death on the bottle. Again he beat me up. Then he carried us on the

porch. I was still crying so he slapped me, knocking me clean off

the porch. As I fell I hit my head on the side of the steps and

blood came gushing out. He got some scared and cleaned away all

traces of the blood. He even tried to push down the big knot that

had popped up on my forehead.

That evening we sat on the porch waiting, as we did every evening,

for Mama them to come up the hill. The electric lights were coming

on in Mr. Carter's big white house as all the Negro shacks down in

the bottom began to fade with the darkness. Once it was completely

dark, the lights in Mr. Carter's house looked even brighter, like a

big lighted castle. It seemed like the only house on the whole

plantation.

Most evenings, after the Negroes had come from the fields, washed

and eaten, they would sit on their porches, look up toward Mr.

Carter's house and talk. Sometimes as we sat on our porch Mama told

me stories about what was going on in that big white house. She

would point out all the brightly lit rooms, saying that Old Lady

Carter was baking tea cakes in the kitchen, Mrs. Carter was reading

in the living room, the children were studying upstairs, and Mr.

Carter was sitting up counting all the money he made off

Negroes.

I was sitting there thinking about Old Lady Carter's tea cakes when

I heard Mama's voice: "Essie Mae! Essie Mae!"

Suddenly I remembered the knot on my head and I jumped off the

porch and ran toward her. She was now running up the hill with her

hoe in one hand and straw hat in the other. Unlike the other

farmhands, who came up the hill dragging their hoes behind them,

puffing and blowing, Mama usually ran all the way up the hill

laughing and singing. When I got within a few feet of her I started

crying and pointing to the big swollen wound on my forehead. She

reached out for me. I could see she was feeling too good to beat

George Lee so I ran right past her and headed for Daddy, who was

puffing up the hill with the rest of the field hands. I was still

crying when he reached down and swept me up against his broad

sweaty chest. He didn't say anything about the wound but I could

tell he was angry, so I cried even harder. He waved goodnight to

the others as they cut across the hill toward their shacks.

As we approached the porch, Daddy spotted George Lee headed down

the hill for home.

"Come here boy!" Daddy shouted, but George Lee kept walking.

"Hey boy, didn't you hear me call you? If you don't get up that

hill I'll beat the daylights outta you!"

Trembling, George Lee slowly made his way back up the hill.

"What happen to Essie Mae here? What happen?" Daddy demanded.

"Uh . . . uh . . . she fell offa d' porch 'n hit her head on d'step

. . ." George Lee mumbled.

"Where were you when she fell?"

"Uhm . . . ah was puttin' a diaper on Adline."

"If anything else happen to one o' these chaps, I'm goin' to try my

best to kill you. Get yo'self on home fo' I . . ."

The next morning George Lee didn't show up. Mama and Daddy waited

for him a long time.

"I wonder where in the hell could that damn boy be," Daddy said

once or twice, pacing the floor. It was well past daylight when

they decided to go on to the field and leave Adline and me at home

alone.

"I'm gonna leave y'all here by yo'self, Essie Mae," said Mama. "If

Adline wake up crying, give her the bottle. I'll come back and see

about y'all and see if George Lee's here."

She left some beans on the table and told me to eat them when I was

hungry. As soon as she and

Daddy slammed the back door I was hungry. I went in the kitchen and

got the beans. Then I climbed in to the rocking chair and began to

eat them. I was some scared. Mama had never left us at home alone

before. I hoped George Lee would come even though I knew he would

beat me.

All of a sudden George Lee walked in the front door. He stood there

for a while grinning and looking at me, without saying a word. I

could tell what he had on his mind and the beans began to shake in

my hands.

"Put them beans in that kitchen," he said, slapping me hard on the

face.

"I'm hungry," I cried with a mouth full of beans.

He slapped me against the head again and took the beans and carried

them into the kitchen. When he came back he had the kitchen matches

in his hand.

"I'm goin' to burn you two cryin' fools up. Then I won't have to

come here and keep yo' asses every day."

As I looked at that stupid George Lee standing in the kitchen door

with that funny grin on his face, I thought that he might really

burn us up. He walked over to the wall near the fireplace and began

setting fire to the bulging wallpaper. I started crying. I was so

scared I was peeing all down my legs. George Lee laughed at me for

peeing and put the fire out with his bare hands before it burned

very much. Then he carried me and Adline on to the porch and left

us there. He went out in the yard to crack nuts and play.

We were on the porch only a short time when I heard a lot of

hollering coming from toward the field. The hollering and crying

got louder and louder. I could hear Mama's voice over all the rest.

It seemed like all the people in the field were running to our

house. I ran to the edge of the porch to watch them top the hill.

Daddy was leading the running crowd and Mama was right behind

him.

"Lord have mercy, my children is in that house!" Mama was

screaming. "Hurry, Diddly!" she cried to Daddy. I turned around and

saw big clouds of smoke booming out of the front door and shooting

out of cracks everywhere. "There, Essie Mae is on the porch," Mama

said. "Hurry, Diddly! Get Adline outta that house!" I looked back

at Adline. I couldn't hardly see her for the smoke.

George Lee was standing in the yard like he didn't know what to do.

As Mama them got closer, he ran into the house. My first thought

was that he would be burned up. I'd often hoped he would get

killed, but I guess I didn't really want him to die after all. I

ran inside after him but he came running out again, knocking me

down as he passed and leaving me lying face down in the burning

room. I jumped up quic...

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编辑推荐

Blunt, powerful, and angry, Coming of Age in Mississippi dares

the reader to find anything poetic in the lives of black people

living in rural Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s, "where they knew,

as I knew, the price you pay daily for being black." Anne Moody

begins with her childhood - houses papered with newspaper, children

left alone because parents have to work, her own after-school

housecleaning jobs that begin at the age of nine so she can help

her family eat. Smart and athletic, she earns scholarships through

college, but her thoughts are increasingly consumed by the racism

that surrounds her. She is one of the original protestors at the

Woolworth's counter in Jackson; after college she helps lead a

voter registration drive in rural Canton, Mississippi, "where

Negroes frequently turned up dead." She describes finding her own

name on a Klan "wanted" list, seeing a boy beaten as FBI agents

watch from across the street, hearing of murders - Emmet Till,

Medgar Evars, John F. Kennedy, her own uncle. She lives her life

knowing she can no longer return safely to her hometown and feeling

estranged from family members who do not share her passionate

commitment to fight racism. She is easy on no one, not even Martin

Luther King, whose nonviolent stance she eventually questions. Anne

Moody's book, written when she was twenty-eight, is both proof of

her convictions and a forthright testament to the sacrifices,

terror, and courage that made up the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of

the 1960s. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's

Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From

500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

书籍介绍

Moody's famous autobiography is a classic work on growing up poor and Black in the rural South. Her searing account of life before the Civil Rights Movement is as moving as The Color Purple and as important as And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. "A history of our time . . . (and) a reminder that we cannot now relax".--Senator Edward Kennedy.