It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cau...se you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Stupid or smart, there wasn't much choice about what was going to happen to me ... Growing up was like falling into a hole.... I m...ight not quit school, not while Mama had any say in the matter, but what difference would that make? What was I going to do in five years? Work in the textile mill? Join Mama at the diner? It all looked bleak to me. No wonder people got crazy as they grew up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But always and sometimes questioning the old modes And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor,... Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now, Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the planning and designing of new communities, housing projects, and urban renewal, the planners both public and private, need ...to give explicit consideration to the kind of world that is being created for the children who will be growing up in these settings. Particular attention should be given to the opportunities which the environment presents or precludes for involvement of children with persons both older and younger than themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anyw...here else in Iowa. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some authority on parenting once said, "Hold them very close and then let them go." This is the hardest truth for a father to lear...n: that his children are continuously growing up and moving away from him (until, of course, they move back in).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It might sound a paradoxical thing to say--for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental tim...e--but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Adults empathize so readily with a clinging child because all of us (including those who were raised by doting mothers who stayed ...home) have felt abandoned at some time or other as children: it's part of growing up. . . . But you can't stop working because your child doesn't want you to leave her--and you needn't think it would be better if you could.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Children] need time to stare at a wall, daydream over a picture book, make mud pies, kick a ball around, whistle a tune or play t...he kazoo--to do the things today's adults had time to do when they were growing up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »