comment on theme

Racism operates on several different levels in the novel, showing that it is never singular or isolated. The housewives of the Old Village are presented as good and heroic ladies, but they are also shown to have implicit biases that feed into systemic racism. When Patricia attempts to convince her friends that there is something wrong with James, Grace assures her: “He lives in the Old Village. With us. There isn’t anything wrong with him because people who have something wrong with them don’t live here” (156). Because all of the people who live in the Old Village are white, Grace’s assumption is that white people do not ever have anything wrong with them, which implies that only people of color have something wrong with them.