Amoebaean for Daddy
Amoebaean for Daddy - meaning Summary
Childhood and Conflicted Grief
The poem recollects a childhood shaped by racial attention and family hardship. The speaker remembers being admired by white strangers while her mother endures public humiliation and her father appears physically diminished and silent. Domestic pride and deprivation coexist—good china beside loneliness. The closing lines mix resentment and sorrow toward the father, suggesting his lingering life prolonged the family’s burden and complicates the speaker’s affection and grief.
Read Complete AnalysesI was a pretty baby. White folks used to stop My mother Just to look at me. (All black babies Are Cute.) Mother called me Bootsie and Daddy said … (Nobody listened to him). On the Union Pacific, a Dining-car waiter, bowing and scraping, Momma told him to Stand up straight, he shamed her In the big house (Bought from tips) in front of her Nice club ladies. His short legs were always Half bent. He could have posed as The Black jockey Mother found And put on the lawn. He sat silent when We ate from the good railroad china And stolen silver spoons. Furniture crowded our Lonely house. But I was young and played In the evenings under a blanket of Licorice sky. When Daddy came home (I might be forgiven) that last night, I had been running in the Big backyard and Stood sweating above the tired old man, Panting like a young horse, Impatient with his lingering. He said “All I ever asked, all I ever asked, all I ever—” Daddy, you should have died Long before I was a Pretty baby, and white Folks used to stop Just to look at me.
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