Prologue, Part 1
Frieda and she had a long conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn't join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley. (1.1.35)
Prologue, Part 2
Occasionally an item provoked a physical reaction: an increase of acid irritation in the upper intestinal tract, a light flush of perspiration at the back of the neck....The sofa, for example. It h...
Autumn, Chapter 1
They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their u...
Autumn, Chapter 2
This disrupter of seasons was a new girl in school named Maureen Peal. A high-yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back. She was rich, at least by...
Autumn, Chapter 3
In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. (3.7.21)
Winter, Chapter 4
The birdlike gestures are worn away to a mere picking and plucking her way between the tire rims and the sunflowers, between Coke bottles and milkweed, among all the waste and beauty of the world &...