Coming Of Age In Mississippi

Moody arrives in New Orleans late at night. She knocks at her grandmother’s door and asks if she can stay there, but Winnie will not let her in. Moody knows that Winnie is frightened because of her work with the Movement. Moody ponders where to go next and remembers Uncle George Lee lives nearby. He welcomes her, and Moody spends the next two days sleeping. She goes back to the Maple Hill restaurant to see if she can find work. Her former coworkers are excited to see her and are proud of her activism. She gets a job there, but her heart is not in it.

Moody and Adline (who is also staying with George Lee) pool their resources and find an apartment. Later, Mama arrives in New Orleans for a birthday party held in her honor. The initial conversation between Moody and Mama is strained and becomes worse when Moody fails to notice for the first half-hour that Mama is holding a 3-month-old baby. Moody feels torn between her blood family, who cannot understand why she grieves “over problems they didn’t even want to think about” (352), and the people she knows from the Movement, who share her passion.