Summary

In Chapter 13, Jefferson says there were generations worth of youngsters who learned “the standard race curriculum” (98). She said each of those young people have a debt to their race but she wonders if future generations will be “exempt.” She questions whether future generations will be examples of the damages inherited by Jefferson's generation.

In Chapter 14, Jefferson and Denise recited a poem by Langston Hughes. They used an exaggerated “ignorant dialect” that they found funny, but their mother was not amused and immediately set out to increase the girls' awareness and appreciation of the accomplishments of Negroes. Jefferson lists several of those Negroes and ends this section by asking a question that was apparently posed by their mother: “Do you really want to know as little as your white schoolmates know about where we came from and what we've accomplished?” (105).

By age 10, Jefferson was...