P.S. Be Eleven

Historically, the Jackson Five was a band composed of five brothers, including lead singer Michael Jackson, who later went on to solo fame during the late 1970s. For Delphine and her sisters, the Jackson Five represents their engagement with cultural forces beyond the family. For Delphine, the Jackson Five also represents idealized, romantic love. Her crush on the tall Jackson brother is a fantasy love that she recognizes for what it is in the last chapter of the novel.

Big Ma and Pa’s ridicule and disapproval of the Jackson Five stem from their sense that the boys in the band represent disorder. They perceive that the Jacksons are embodying roles that should be reserved for adults. The Gaither sisters’ enthusiasm for young entertainers that look like them shows that the authority figures’ efforts to shape values within the family can be undercut by powerful external forces like popular culture. As a band of young, Black children, the Jackson Five also represent a Black youth culture that was becoming more prominent in the late 1960s as a result of the gains of the civil rights movement and Black Power movement. Delphine’s indignation over the fact that there is only one picture of the Jacksons—and that it is located on the back of the teen magazines—shows her awareness of how popular culture can reinforce the inequality between children and adults and between people of different races in the United States.