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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in God Help the Child, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Inherited Trauma
Racism and Colorism
Child Abuse and Healing
Arrested Development and Unconditional Love
Summary
Analysis
Sweetness recalls that when her baby, Lula Ann, was born, she was embarrassed because Lula Ann was “so black she scared [her].” Sweetness and her husband, Louis, were both “high yellow,” and nobody in their family had darker skin. Sweetness says that her grandmother passed for white and, like many others, cut off all communication with her family. She says that when Lula Ann turned “blue-black” right before her eyes, it drove her mad to the point that she held a blanket over Lula Ann’s face and pressed down. She couldn’t go through with it, though, no matter how much she wished her daughter hadn’t been born with that “terrible color.” Louis looked at Lula Ann like she was an alien when she came home. “Goddamn! What the hell is this?” he yelled. He thought Sweetness had “fooled around” with another man, and Sweetness couldn’t convince him otherwise.
The opening of the novel highlights Sweetness’s colorist attitudes. She thinks Bride’s darker skin color is “terrible,” and this bias leads Sweetness to want to kill her daughter. The narrative suggests that Sweetness has inherited this attitude from her ancestors, including her grandmother, who distanced herself from her own family to pass as white. Sweetness’s grandmother decided it was better to be white and renounce your family than to be Black and maintain those connections. While Sweetness doesn't explicitly endorse her grandmother’s decision, she defends it by pointing out how common it was. Sweetness's observation about how common it was for Black people to pass for white at the expense of losing their families shows the novel's view that colorism is not just the result of personal failings but also of systemic inequities.
Themes
Sweetness says that her marriage with Louis ended because of Lula Ann. Louis disappeared for a while but then began sending money order checks for $50 each month. Those checks, along with Sweetness's night job at the hospital, help her to get off welfare. She wishes they still called welfare “relief,” which made it seem like a temporary break while you got your life together. Sweetness says she had to be careful about how she raised Lula Ann because her “color is a cross she will always carry.” But Sweetness says she herself is not to blame. “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not," Sweetness says.
Louis ends his marriage with Sweetness because of Bride’s skin color. From the very beginning of her life, then, Bride is discriminated against based on the color of her skin. Instead of blaming Louis for being colorist, Sweetness blames Bride for breaking apart their marriage. With that in mind, Bride comes into the world bearing the burden not just of Sweetness’s (and Louis’s) colorism, but also of Sweetness’s misguided conviction that Bride destroyed her marriage. That two-sided animosity then drives Sweetness’s abuse and neglect of Bride.
Themes
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