The trauma of returning to her parents plunges Maya anew into the unsettled business of rape trauma and guilt. The imagery of Annie's reunion with Vivian supplies a clear delineation of proper motherhood. On the one hand, Annie is the "large, solid dark hen." Vivian, the lesser of the two mother figures, is the light-toned chick, communicating in "rapid peeps and chirps." In Oakland and out of her milieu, Annie, a stolid, unflinching figure, adjusts well to the multicultural lifestyle while remaining in Los Angeles for six months. Her going, a shattering but irrevocable announcement to her dependent grandchildren, illuminates Momma's role as primary parent, a role which ends with her return to Stamps.
Realigning family structure in their San Francisco home around Bailey, Vivian, and Daddy Clidell, thirteen-year-old Maya, like other citizens on the west coast in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, turns her attention to the threat of a Japanese invasion and to the disappearance of Japanese-Americans, who were incarcerated in internment camps, such as Manzanar in north central California, east of Lone Pine. Angelou's commentary on the complex supplanting of Orientals with Southern blacks illuminates the cultural housing patterns as well as the boost to the black image as the wartime economy increased their worth and self-esteem. She makes no apology for blatant opportunism, which allowed blacks to move into the vacated businesses of Japanese-Americans without qualms.
