Personal Response

>The role for women in times of slavery was to be used for work as the usual but also to be used for sex. The slave owners would take advantage of the slave women and have them carry a child and when that child was born and raised up to a point. That child would be sold for as much money as he or she was worth. Which means the women in slavery was like a business to the white men.

Always was strong willed just like her mother, Clara, and had the ability to overlook situations and plan ahead of them in order to be prepared. Everything she did was to benefit herself and her children or family. In this passage Always recognizes that Karma is taking place because of the news that Loretta is having a child by her son, Sephus. Loretta wants to kill the baby but Always lets Loretta suffer through the birth just as Always has suffered her whole life.

J. California Cooper includes this scene/passage as a moral or metaphor. Here Loretta asks her half-black sister, Always, for help when in reality she belittled her. Illustrating one never knows who that person could be that may assist you with your plea for help. In other words treat everyone with respect and “do onto others as you would like them do onto you”.

It affects the overall questioning because only white people were free and all other people of different color were not. Now in this life time everyone is free, or not? Freedom is defined differently by a diverse multitude of people and every person has a differed vision or belief on what being an American is. Most people believe it is being free and happy but why cant it be something else?

This piece of text reveals that everything starts off with little knowledge of things but as time passes people progress to learn more and make life better. Same as America it started small and progressed to be the best country to live in. As well as the people here, Americans, progressed from being unhappy to becoming happy in t his beautiful country.