Can one be ashamed of their own mother? The narrator says a very intriguing line that i’m pretty sure had most of us in like a shock and that line was “long before i learned to be ashamed of my mother” , this made me stop for a second and think “can someone actually be ashamed of their mother?” because i know i can’t, yes our parents can sometimes do things that we might not like but at the end of the day they our parents and they’re there for us at all time. This made me want to learn more about the mother because i wondered what must’ve caused the narrator to say something like this. Especially since the narrator included this sentence in the very beginning, so it would make the readers curious and want to read more. After reading more i came to a conclusion that the mother wanted the best for their kid. For example when she says “you gonna go there and learn about the whole world” this comes to show that the mother just wanted her daughter to learn and have the opportunity of a good education. Which is what most parents want for their kids.
Everyone seems to be focusing on this question of the daughter feeling ashamed of her mother. My sense here is that the narrator is not trying to suggest that she was RIGHT to feel ashamed of her mother, but rather that she learned to feel ashamed of her mother – perhaps because of her lack of education or her poverty – because of the messages she was taught by society. What do you think?