A Year Down Yonder

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying and graphic violence.

Adjusting to a new home, school, and set of friends can be disorienting; Mary Alice, who has been uprooted from her close-knit family and city surroundings and dropped into a faraway “hick town” to live with her intimidating grandmother, feels as if she is moving and breathing in an entirely foreign element. Besides missing her family, friends, and amenities like movie theaters, in-house bathrooms, and radio stations, her citified appearance and manners put her out of step with her new classmates, one of whom calls her a “rich Chicago girl” and tries to extort a dollar from her on her first day of school (12). Unused to threats like this, Mary Alice reacts with fear and bewilderment, and it falls to her hard-as-nails grandmother to fight this first “battle” for her. As the months pass, however, Mary Alice adjusts to her new surroundings, exchanging her puff sleeves, open-toed Easter shoes, and finger-waved hairdo for more practical, country styles better suited to the diligent work of helping her tireless grandmother. Though the lack of modern plumbing and the town’s rudimentary idea of law and order at first appall her, she eventually adapts.