Grandma’s Invented Metaphor
The narrator informs readers about how he acquired a love of language from his grandmother who herself was a master above everyone else when it came to “bending, breaking and building words” that didn’t actually exist. Such is the case during one memorable moment following a quick whipping when Grandmama says afterwards:
“Kie, get out of my kitchen acting like a starnated fool.”
Pop Culture References
The upside of using similes based on a comparison to a pop culture reference is that there is a built-in audience that will immediately get it. As time goes on, however, pop culture references come and go. The example here is of one that has managed to stand the test of time probably better than ever expected, but keep in mind that Inch-High Private Eye shared Saturday mornings with Scoob and was popular at the time:
“Seth Donald, a white boy with two names looked like a dustier Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, but with braces.”
Anorexia Jokes
The narrator’s story—as the title might indicate—revolves around the issue of weight and body image. He begins losing weight. His uncle views this with a suspicion that somehow manages to combine racism and sexism together for an insulting metaphor:
“You just loving weight? My nephew darknwent to grad school and now he turning into a white girl.”
Write like Wright
The narrator is reading Richard Wright and is moved to make a confession about his literary ambitions. Then that confession moves him to make another. It is almost an example of simile as poetry within prose:
“I wanted to write like Wright far more than I wanted to write like Faulkner, but I didn’t really want to write like Wright at all. I wanted to fight like Wright.”
The Pain of a Nation
The narrator launches into a long, expressive litany of things which fulfill the assertion planted by the opening metaphor and the concluding metaphor. It is a summing up, in many ways, of the entire story. A through cataloguing the inherent cruelty of the nation that continues to take place because so many are afraid to speak about:
“My body knew things my mouth and my mind couldn't, or maybe wouldn't, express… My body knew white folk were trained to harm us in ways we could never harm them.”
