It is almost impossible to exaggerate the importance with which Maya viewed this incident, saying "If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than the apes" (Angelou, Chapter 19).

This is not the only time that violence and black males are associated in the novel, nor the only time that such an association has an impact on Maya's character and outlook on life. One day, her brother Bailey comes home after first witnessing the body of a black man pulled from a pond, then being forced to help load the body in a truck and humiliated by the white man instructing him, finally asking, "Uncle Willie, why do they hate us so much?'" (Angelou, Chapter 25). Maya's understanding of race and identity is largely constructed by these random...
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