I’m through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I’ll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I’ll be you. I’ll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn’t meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn’t have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we’ll all be soon dead anyway.
Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of a Young Black Girl in the Rural South
