Jesse Joy Boothe Summary

Jesse was written by the writer Joy Boothe. It is a short story. The story is about the narrator and 22 of the first 27 years of the narrator’s life.

The story takes places in the middle of twentieth century. “I am eleven and staying at Granny’s. It is June 7, 1963.” is the quote there tells when the story takes place. More accurate happens the story from around 1957 when the narrator is 5 to 1979 when the narrator is 27. The story jumps in time. It starts when the narrator is 5 then it skips until she is 8. Thereafter it jumps to the age of 9 and from this to 11. The story jumps again to when the narrator is 14. At last it fast-forwards to when the narrator is 27 years old. The climate is very hot as we see with the quotes “and it was bad …show more content…
The father shows his attitude to the black people in this quote “Jesse and Daddy work in the hot sun all day long digging up the septic tank. I hear them laughing and talking like they are off fishing instead of ankle deep in stink. …. At lunchtime, Daddy takes two heaping plates of collards and cornbread and says he will eat on the back steps with Jesse. Now I know he really likes Jesse. We can’t have Jesse in our house because he’s a nigger.”. So, although the granny hates it and he cannot eat inside the house, he still wants to eat with a black man. The same concern the narrator. She is also very glad for Jesse and does not care if Jesse is black or white. Several quotes support that “Boy, was Granny wrong, but I can’t tell her.”, “I ask if she’ll take me that night so I can see Jesse.” or “I name my son Jesse.”. In the start, she knows Jesse is not different but she does not want to tell Granny but after her father’s dead she told Granny that she wanted to see him. Additionally, she also names her son after him. That is even though she does not like the name before she gets to know Jesse. “Jesse. I am five years old and I hate the name.”. It shows that when she was 5 she did not like the name and after all Jesse had so much influence on the narrator that she named her son after …show more content…
As well as the above-mentioned quotes, there is also “Granny looks at me like I have lost my mind and says we don’t have any business in a room full of nigger men.”. Not everybody in the story is negative against the blacks but especially the granny is very much against them as she does not allow the narrator to meet “the niggers”, as the granny calls them, when the narrator wants to attend the night when the black people who worked with the narrator’s father are giving the father respect. The granny is not only against them because she allows the black people to give their respect to the father if the narrator does not attend. The granny’s reaction when she finds out that the narrator’s son is going to be named after a black man is not very positive. “She pauses. “Except for that big nigger worked for your Daddy at the mill.” Our eyes meet for a second and I know that she knows. Everything about her stiffens. She turns away. “I’d better make some gravy to go with that roast,” she says.”. Even though it was approximately around 15 years since the Jim Crow laws was overruled by The Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the granny discovered that Jesse the narrator’s son was named after black man, the granny was not happy and she did even stiffen and turn