ve as well out here as people at home think. I am coming back home. . . . I am just wasting time out here (Moody 113).
The economic hardships for blacks in the South in the 1950s are also created by racist conditions which force blacks to struggle to merely survive, as this passage about Moody's father makes clear:
The crop wasn't coming along as he had expected. Every evening when he came from the field he was terribly depressed. . . . "Ain't gonna have nuthin' left when Mr. Carter take out his share." We had to hear this sermon almost every night and he was always snapping at Mama like it was all her fault (Moody 17).
However, the book, even in its portrayal of racism in the 1950s, is not without hope. Overcoming racism requires encouragement from others, which Moody receives from Raymond, from her mother, and from the Clai
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