Toni Cade Bambara did an excellent job of portraying a child who is on the verge of growing up. I had no idea the narrator was a child until a few paragraphs into the story, where Hazel speaks of having to sit in the kids section at the theater. I’m very intrigued with Hazel because of how her maturity and childishness (if that’s a word) come together to create such a confused little girl. She has been brought up not to take s**t from anyone, and stands up for what she believes in. At the same time, she lights candy stands up in flames while throwing a temper tantrum. <\/p>\n
As a reader, I felt that Hazel was wise beyond her years. I desperately wanted her to be a teenager or an older woman because I felt so bad that she didn’t understand her uncle’s promise that he would marry her one day. I wanted to be able to picture a strong, older woman with great things ahead of her in life. Instead, there’s a little girl named Hazel who still has plenty of growing up to do. <\/p>\n
Toni Cade Bambara is saying a lot through the characterization of Hazel. It takes a lot to make such a young child so mature, and I feel that Hazel is so strong because she is an African American girl in the south who has to put up with the racism that surrounds her on a daily basis. Hazel is a grown woman when it comes to standing up for what she believes in, but she is also a little girl who has so much left to see in this world. Hazel has so much drive and self belief. The end of this story leaves me wanting to know more about her life and how she grew up.<\/p>\n
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Toni Cade Bambara did an excellent job of portraying a child who is on the verge of growing up. I had no idea the narrator was a child until a few paragraphs into the story, where Hazel speaks of having to sit in the kids section at the theater. I’m very intrigued with Hazel because … Continue reading Gorilla, My Love<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}