The essay “My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children” describes the experience of Hilton Als, a young black man growing up in Brooklyn. The quote, “Standing by my mother’s living-room window, I tried, tentatively, to ask her why our world was burning, burning. She gave me a forbidding look: Boy, be quiet so you can survive, her eyes seemed to say” is significant to one of the overarching themes of the essay, silence. At this point in his life, the author was still living in Brownsville. The quote was during the turning point from Brownsville feeling like a warm, welcoming community to it constantly having riots. When the author says that the world is “burning”, I believe he is referring to all the general violence and vandalism that is occurring down his street, not necessarily just fire. There were protestors throwing bottles and stones at cops, smashing car windows, and burning trash. When Hilton Als’s mother tells him that silence is the way to survival, the text implies she is telling him not to be like the other young men in the neighborhood. Als uses the example of Richard Ross, a young fourteen-year old boy who was shot and killed by a police detective, John Rattley, who accused him of mugging an old Jewish man. By Als’s mother saying he needs to be quiet to survive, she literally means that by staying silent and not getting involved in riots or violence, Als would be protecting himself and his family. This quote is significant to the overall narrative because it describes how Als went about his life: in silence. At the end of the essay, there is a long paragraph about all the racist comments he had been told, and yet how he didn’t say anything to those people who were racist towards him. It seemed like for a while he continued to live by the motto he learned from his mother, “be quiet so you can survive”.

In the quote, “I don’t remember exactly how many times we moved; in those days, my focus was on trying to win people over, the better to protect my family, or—silently—trying to fend off homophobia, the better to protect myself. My being a “faggot” was one way for other people to feel better about themselves. My being a “faggot” let cops know what they weren’t”, Als discusses what his life was like growing up as a queer black man. Not only did he have to suffer the consequences of being a black man, he was subjected to even more violence and negativity because he was gay. He was even called a “faggot” by his peers, people of the same race, and by doing so, those people felt some type of validation in themselves by making fun of Als. The same goes for the police as Als knows that as a queer man, he has a larger target on his back than any other black men. This quote directly relates to one of essay’s themes of silence. With Als being a queer man and being less accepted, he feels pressure to be silent in order to protect himself. If no one knows he is queer, he is less likely to be hurt or killed by the police and everyone else. As unfortunate as that sounds, that is the reality Als had to face.

One quote that I thought was interesting and disappointing to read was, “No place was safe, because wherever we congregated was unsafe”. This quote came after the author was describing his life and how his family was constantly moving. He talks about how he moved from Brownsville to Bedford-Stuyvesant, then to Crown Heights and how none of those places felt safe to him. Whether it be because of the laws of real estate, economics, racism, or the cops and social workers, those barriers were always present in the lives of many black people and other people of color. Those barriers were the main reasons why Als and his family felt unsafe. This is a really sad concept to think about because home is where people should feel the safest, not where they should feel afraid. There is the comfort of family, but when there isn’t comfort in people right outside of the front door, it can make home feel unsafe, like it did to Als.