coming of age in mississippi by anne moody

For Anne, the late development of awareness was completely justified. As a result, even though I still believe that the greatest awareness develops at an older age, nowadays we have a bigger chance to develop it earlier and easier. However, nowadays children receive explanations, guidelines, and tips, and Moody’s questions were brushed off. I think that this approach to depicting the question is insightful: even nowadays, when the politics of race is studied at school, young children are rarely capable of applying their knowledge to the real society. During her high school years, Moody begins to understand them to a greater extent. While mostly innocent, Anne’s childhood brings along questions, and she begins to see the social difference between the white and the black intuitively, without knowing what citizenship or society means. It becomes the final part of the work, thus demonstrating the growth and maturation of Anne as a citizen and a person who is willing to engage in a fight for her rights and the rights of other citizens. The fourth part of the work is titled “The Movement.” The author does not state the full name of the movement, which implies its importance and uniqueness for herself and the rest of society. The four parts of the work do not show the life of a girl as we are used to it rather, they show the psychological, educational, and emotional maturation of a woman as a citizen who begins to find the meaning of her life in the participation in social movements and grows to incorporate race into her understanding of herself. Moreover, it can be stated that the memoir is devoted to this increasing understanding to a large extent. The form of a memoir allows demonstrating how Moody grows to understand the politics of race and citizenship and how this understanding prepares her to fight for her rights.

In this paper, I will consider some of the key topics that Moody raises in her work and dwell on my response to them. As a memoir of an African-American woman who was involved in the Civil Rights Movement, Coming of Age in Mississippi is most suitable for a discussion on race, social movement, and citizenship.

Coming of age in mississippi by anne moody