The Civil Rights Movement and Jim Crow Laws
What I Know
What I Want to Know
What I Learned

Narrator Reliability: The narrator’s ability to present the “real” story with an unbiased view.

Reliable Narrator
Unreliable Narrator
Can be trusted by the reader, although the reader may not agree with the narrator
Is honest even if the telling of the story is offensive or unpleasant
Understands the plot
Provides events that may actually happen for any particular occurrence
Cannot be trusted
Misleads the readers
Distorts the truth
Makes the reader evaluate the story and read between the lines
Speaks or behaves in a manner which is not consistent throughout the story

Mama as a reliable narrator:
Mama as an unreliable narrator:

Do you think Alice Walker chose the right narrator for the story? Why or why not?

Dialect is a version of language that is individual to a people of a particular place, time, or social group. Mama has a distinct dialect referred to as Southern American English.

Examples of Mama’s dialect:
1. How I look mama

2. no mama

3. there ant no window

How might we say the same thing here?
1. How do I look mama

2. No mother

2. There isn’t a window

Comprehension Questions
1. How would Maggie and Dee use the quilts differently?

Dee sees them as artifacts from a lost time.

2. When she was a child, something terrible happened to Maggie. What was it?

She got burned in a fire.

3. Dee is referred to as the child who “made it.” What