Part 5 Summary and Analysis

In this section, the author looks back at a time she spent with her mother's family in Atlanta. She stays with her uncle Bobby, his wife and two sons. She relishes her freedom here. However, she fails to fit in with her black family, as is evidenced by her aunt's failure to cornrow her hair. At Uncle Bobby's, though, she enjoys staying up late with the boys and watching sports. One day, though, she witnesses Uncle Bobby beat on of his boys with a belt. Though she knows her mother forbade him to physically discipline Walker, she fears him.

Like her mother's absence at Uncle Jackie's, Walker's father never visits her mother's family in Georgia. This emphasizes the differences in Walker's life and makes her feel that something must be wrong with a part of her. Her cousins refer to some...