My mother is now diseased, according to the girl’s eyes, and until the moment her mother takes her and the form to the front of the auditorium, the girl never stops looking at my mother. (351)
In this passage, the mother of the narrator is forced to admit her illiteracy to the mother of a little girl they encounter when attempting to register for school. The little girl’s mother does not seem to place any judgement on the narrator’s mother, except she seems to become “happier and, so much more satisfied with everything.” On the other hand, the little girl does not stop staring at the narrator’s mother until she is passed over to her new teacher. As a reader, I found this passage most powerful because many people have felt as the narrator and her mother do in this story: inferior. Some come from families that can only provide what they need, while they work for any of their wants, and they get looked at as less than the people around them. When their peers realize that they do not come from money or have everything handed to them, most feel as if their peers look at their family just as the little girl at the narrator’s school looks at the narrator’s mother.