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Crystal Mayberry is a young black woman who moves into Arleen’s apartment after Arleen is evicted. Crystal suggests that Arleen and the boys stay in the apartment, and the two women live together until they are both evicted. Crystal has severe mental health problems and regularly seeks out women to serve as mother figures to her. She also befriends Vanetta and Patricia, but neither friendship lasts. Deeply religious, Crystal ends up sleeping on the streets and pursuing sex work after being kicked out of the Lodge.
Crystal Mayberry Quotes in Evicted
The Evicted quotes below are all either spoken by Crystal Mayberry or refer to Crystal Mayberry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
In the 1960s and 1970s, destitute families often relied on extended kin networks to get by. Poor black families were "immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on," wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations—the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them—had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit "kin dependence" by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own. If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew.
Get the entire Evicted LitChart as a printable PDF.
Crystal Mayberry Quotes in Evicted
The Evicted quotes below are all either spoken by Crystal Mayberry or refer to Crystal Mayberry. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
In the 1960s and 1970s, destitute families often relied on extended kin networks to get by. Poor black families were "immersed in a domestic web of a large number of kin and friends whom they [could] count on," wrote the anthropologist Carol Stack in All Our Kin. Those entwined in such a web swapped goods and services on a daily basis. This did little to lift families out of poverty, but it was enough to keep them afloat. But large-scale social transformations—the crack epidemic, the rise of the black middle class, and the prison boom among them—had frayed the family safety net in poor communities. So had state policies like Aid to Families with Dependent Children that sought to limit "kin dependence" by giving mothers who lived alone or with unrelated roommates a larger stipend than those who lived with relatives.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was next to impossible for people to survive deep poverty on their own. If you could not rely on your family, you could reach out to strangers, make disposable ties. But it was a lot to ask of someone you barely knew.
