In the following essay, Meyer describes how "The Sky is Gray" is a coming of age story not just about coming to terms with growing up, but also dealing with the sensual orientation of one's body. He looks at two contrasting ideas, the African/aural roots—the idea that African Americans express themselves through their music and aural interpretations—and their American/visual reorientation—the idea that America is a country of visual stimulations, that as Emerson said "the eye is final."

Each of the first two stories in Ernest J. Gaines's Bloodline—"A Long Day in November" and "The Sky Is Gray" —describes a black boy or youth attempting to come to terms not just with the world in which he lives, his parents' problems, and the racism which circumscribes him but, more importantly, with the sensory orientation of his own...