Sandra K. Friday
The last five pages of the novel focus on Ellen's determination to bring Starletta to her new home and to meet her new mama because she has come to realize how much Starletta's friendship means to her and that, as she says, "her being colored is just the way she is" (Gibbons 85). There is nothing she wants more than to have Starletta stay overnight and sleep in her bed. Ellen has come full circle in dispelling her prejudice from the time when, in a crisis, she stayed with Starletta's family and said she had not really slept in a "colored" house because she did not take her coat off and she slept on top of the covers.
In this lesson my students will choose passages to mark and discuss that express Ellen's transformation from racial prejudice. It is Ellen's same clear, candid, innocent yet wise voice they will hear in these passages, as she asks Starletta's forgiveness for thinking God chose her over Starletta because of her color.
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All I know now is that I want Starletta in my house and if she tells me to I will
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lick the glass she uses just to show that I love her and her being colored is just
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the way she is. That is all (Gibbons 85).
This is the same Ellen who, on page 30, confided, "As fond as I am of all three of them I do not think I could drink after them . . ." Students will make connections between this Ellen and the Ellen on page 85.
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I already told my "new mama" I would like her to make a fuss over how pretty
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Starletta is. But not the kind of fuss that says you sure are pretty to be colored.
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The kind that says you sure are pretty and that is all (Gibbons 123).
My students will mark and discuss these passages and others they will choose that document Ellen's humanity towards Starletta. Marking and discussing these passages will necessitate that we look at Ellen's perspective and how it has changed, and it will give my students and me an opportunity to look at and try to examine our own perspective about prejudice.
To explore Ellen's transformation, students might choose some of the following passages when she and Starletta are resting on the bed, before dinner. Ellen thinks to herself:
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And I will lay here too and wait for supper beside a girl that every rule in the book
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says I should not have in my house much less laid still and sleeping by me
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(Gibbons 124).
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I came a long way to get here but when I think about it real hard you will see
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that old Starletta came even farther. . . . (Gibbons 126).
And I hope some of my students choose to mark and discuss Ellen's last lines about Starletta and herself, which are also the last lines of the novel:
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And all the time I thought I had the hardest row to hoe. That will always amaze me
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(Gibbons 126).
Underneath Ellen's final narrative with Starletta, and her liberation from prejudice, is an invitation for my students and me to explore the presence of prejudice and our own personal prejudices.
