Book Review of Anne Moodys Coming of Age in Mississippi
Anne Moody’s autobiographical book, Coming Of Age In Mississippi, is more than just a childhood memoir by the author. Because it is played against the all too real background of racial tension in Mississippi of the segregation era, it is also a chronicle of the Civil Rights struggle and racial politics of that time. The early part of her book relates Moody’s experiences as a girl in the rural small town of Centreville, Mississippi. ... This was an interesting aspect of her book for it shows that racism was not only prevalent among the Mississippi whites but even an element of it among some blacks who because of their lighter skins considered themselves to have a higher station in life than the darker blacks. Moody showed an example of this in her book when she wrote about her mother marrying a light-skinned black man named Raymond. ... Later, Anne Moody went to work for Mrs. ... Burke’s part because of Wayne’s apparent interest in Anne Moody during (and after) the tutoring sessions. ... This part of the book came off as almost comedic as we see a funny look at Mrs. ... Much more serious, however, was the cloud of tension that fell over Centreville in 1955 when they received news of the death of Emmett Till in another Mississippi town. ... In August 1955, his mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, agreed to let Emmett, her only child, visit his uncle Mose Wright in the Mississippi Delta. ... She instructed Emmett to be submissive to white people in Mississippi. ... Mose Wright lived near the small town of Money, Mississippi. ... He told his astonished Mississippi cousins that the white girl was his girlfriend.