Similarities Between Helen And Maude Martha

Maud Martha is constantly compared to her sister Helen, who is deemed to be prettier and better liked than Maud in her family and amongst strangers: “For the basic situation had never changed. Helen was still the one they wanted in the wagon, still ‘the pretty one,’ ‘the dainty one.’ The lovely one” (Brooks 50). The comparisons and attitudes towards Helen and Maud Martha are a prime example of colourism. Helen is considered to be high yellow. Maud Martha is considered to be low yellow. HIgh yellow is closer to the white ideal. Helen symbolically acts as a representation of white ideals that have affected the Black community, and that the Black community therefore tries to uphold. Maud Martha wants acceptance from her community, while the Black
Gentrification is an actual force while colourism is an abstract concept. Each are just as powerful, but the difference is key. Gentrification is more visible and more overtly forced. In Hayden’s poem even the grifters are protective: “No time of starched/ and ironed innocence. Godfearing/ elders, even godless grifters, tried/ as best they could to shelter/ us” (Hayden
She would have the janitor move the bed and dresser out, tell Paul to buy a studio couch, a desk chest, a screen, a novelty chair, a white Venetian blind for the first room, and a green one for the kitchen, since the wall paper there was green (with little red fishes swimming about). Perhaps they could even get a rug. A green one. And green drapes for the windows. Why, this might even turn out to be their dream apartment” (Brooks 58). It is telling that Martha calls it her “home”. Maud never got to have her own home in her entire life. Therefore, the concept that she gets to make a space her own is very important to her and like staking a claim on her space in the world as truly hers. However, because tenants move out so much the owner of the building will not allow Maud Martha and her husband to make changes to the apartment or decorate it. The apartment then becomes grey to her, and lifeless. Green is usually associated with life, but she is no longer able to bring green into her apartment so it becomes grey and not a place for her to create a life or create and raise one in the form of a