Coming Of Age In Mississippi Book Review Essay

Coming of Age in Mississippi is an autobiography written by Anne Moody, published in 1968, which chronicles the struggles of a black woman growing up in Mississippi from her early childhood years up until her mid twenty’s. Once published, the autobiography was able to capture the hearts and minds of all types of American people, not divided by race, gender or social class, and exposed them to the horrors of racism that Blacks had to face in the Southern United States. Moody divides the story into four sections of her early life, Childhood, High School, College and The Movement.

The Childhood section begins with Essie Mae (Anne Moody’s birth name), born into extreme poverty, as a four year old. She lives with her mother, Toosweet, father Diddly, and sister Adline in a sharecrop plantation owned by a white farmer. Her parents worked in the hard long hours in the field during the day while George Lee, Essie’s cousin,would babysit Essie and Adline. George Lee

Toosweet gives birth to Essie’s brother Junior and is able to scrape by with a cafe salary to provide for her children on her own. Essie encounters the idea of racism early on when she goes to the movies with a few of her white neighbors and isn’t allowed to sit with them. This event leads her to wonder why she had been treated differently based on her skin color. Upon hard financial times in her family, Essie begins working when she is only 9 years old for white employers to try and take some of the burden off of her mother’s shoulders. Linda Jean is one of said employers who is a nice white lady, however her mother Mrs. Burke is an extreme white supremacist who tries as hard as she can to make life miserable for Essie. Mrs. Claiborne, another employer of Essie, helps to prove not all whites are like Mrs. Burke by allowing her to eat with her family and treating her as if she were her own