A Hard Row to Hoe

A Hard Row to Hoe is a narrative novel that stems from the memoirs of its main character, Ree, born in 1941. The story is based on her recollections from the around the age of four years old to the end of the decade. The story gives a concise view of the time, history, and southern setting in which the story unfolds. The story tells of how Ree slowly learns about life under the watchful eyes of her mother, doting grandmother, and their profound religious teachings. Although she’s inquisitive, the excessively protective nature of her parents and grandmother always kept her curiosities at bay. However, despite their concerns, this rather sickly, quiet, and curious child senses there’s more to life and utilizes every given opportunity to learn about people outside her secluded world. Sheltered in a world of blackness, she realizes her skin is black, and she’s very happy being black because everybody she knows in her little world is kindhearted and nonjudgmental. It was only when she finally ventures out into the greater society that she realizes what it means to be a little black child in America. Shockingly, her aspirations temporarily floundered when she faced the harsh reality that not all people accepted her blackness. Ree learns life can be hard and very painful and that it incorporates many different kinds of pain–most devastatingly, the pain of rejection. By the story’s end, she has become so resolute it dulled the pain of an unaccepting world. Assuredly, she knows the moral teachings of her mother and grandmother would always be there to help her overcome the stigmas that have been attached to black skin. It is said: there’s nothing new under the sun. Subsequently, everything that goes around comes around. Moral principles that have spanned the decades are embedded within the lines of events, which will provide many teachable moments, just as its gripping conclusion will provide timeless answers to age-old problems.