Not Without Laughter

“‘De Lawd knows it’s a hard job, keepin’ colored chillens in school, Sister Whiteside, a mighty hard job. De niggers don’t help ’em, an’ de white folks don’t care if they stay or not. An’ when they gets along sixteen an’ seventeen, they wants this, an’ they wants that, an’ t’other—an’ when you ain’t got it to give to ’em, they quits school an’ goes to work....Harriett say she ain’t goin’ back next fall. I feels right hurt over it, but she ’clares she ain’t goin’ back to school. Says there ain’t no use in learnin’ books fo’ nothin’ but to work in white folks’ kitchens when she’s graduated.’”

Many of the conflicts in the novel are intergenerational. Hager despairs over Harriet's rejection of faith and Hager's expectation that Harriet will finish high school. While these goals were extraordinary ones during Hager's youth, Harriet sees them as useless; as a younger African American, among the first to be born after slavery, she wants more than her mother.

"This going away was a new thought, and the dark, strong-bodied young woman at the table suddenly began to dream of the cities she had never seen to which Jimboy would lead her. Why, he had been as far north as Canada and as far south as New Orleans, and it wasn’t anything for him to go to Chicago or Denver any time! He was a traveling man—and she, Annjee, was too meek and quiet, that’s what she was—too stay-at-homish. Never going nowhere, never saying nothing back to those who scolded her or talked about her, not even sassing white folks when they got beside themselves….'I want to travel,’ she said to herself. 'I want to go places, too.' But that was why Jimboy married her, because she wasn’t a runabout."

This quote highlights the difference between men and women in their ability to move to different geographic places for mobility. While coming and going are seen as male prerogatives, Annjee's quiet longing shows that women also have the same desires to escape. Many of the African-American migrants who went to cities in search of opportunity were men, so the difference between Annjee and Jimboy's initial experiences is an accurate reflection of the gender divide during the Great Migration. 

“‘Your old Jesus is white, I guess, that’s why! He’s white and stiff and don’t like niggers!’”

Harriet definitively rejects the religion of her mother. While Hager's Christianity serves as a balm that allows her to survive slavery and poverty, Harriet views religion as just another symptom of the hypocrisy of whites and the willingness of African Americans to be duped into passive acceptance of racism.