Food Symbol Analysis

In Coming of Age in Mississippi, food symbolizes self-sufficiency and, ultimately, shows that self-sufficiency is essential for the path to liberation. At the beginning of the memoir, Anne’s parents are sharecroppers. They are dependent on work from the Carters’ estate to live. Throughout the memoir, Anne and her family struggle with lack of food due to Mama’s low pay despite doing back-breaking labor. Raymond dreams of being an independent farmer, untethered to the farms of white people. Anne describes one of the happiest moments in her family, when they are all sitting around the table and joking, during the first few days of their time farming on Raymond’s land. Because they have enough to eat, they are able to more easily be happy as a family. However, for most of the memoir, Mama’s stress at her inability to feed her children causes her to be depressed and cry all the time. Before Anne understands systemic racism, she does not know why white people eat better food than herself and her family. As Anne grows up and becomes involved with the civil rights movement, she hopes that the movement will focus on economic justice for Black people. Anne’s journey from a child’s wish for better food to an adult’s understanding of systemic injustice reinforces the idea that self-sufficiency and self-actualization comes from economic stability.