Having satisfied her curiosity about life in a teen commune, she returns to the security of Vivian, Daddy Clidell, and San Francisco.
Undergirding these enthralling and sometimes picaresque adventures are humanistic themes, each pertaining to some personal fault or social lapse which inhibits Maya's self-fulfillment. These broad ideas
self-worth
security
individuality
suffuse the narrative with significance that is at times poignant and, at others, triumphant. Crucial epiphanies, or coming to knowledge, such as the yard incident in which Maya draws the heart in the dust to honor her grandmother or the night that the family hides Uncle Willie in the vegetable bin to protect him from racist violence, highlight the speaker's pilgrimage toward understanding. The reader, impelled to detest a racist white dentist who would rather treat a dog than relieve the suffering of a black patient, to decry brutal child abuse compounded with guilt and alienation from family, and to cheer a spunky teenager who refuses job discrimination, is likely to identify with and admire a transcendent Maya, who looks within for the way out of racial and patriarchal bondage.
