Symbols & Motifs
Voices
While Packer offers physical descriptions of characters in “Brownies,” she makes explicit mention of many of the characters’ voices in a way that provides insight intotheir personalities. This is particularly important in a story that focuses on race and racial prejudice,as it shifts identity away from the physical by focusing instead on how characters sound, which, in turn, draws our attention to what they say and how they say it.
Songs and Poems
Packer uses songs and poems as a way of deviating from the standard mode of presentation of the text on the page. In doing so, she is able to make the actual text of the story pluralistic, offering more than a unilateral mode of representation. In this manner, Packer provides textual diversity in “Brownies,” reinforcing the need for diversity in order for the successful expression of a society’s collective story.
Malls
Malls consistently function, in “Brownies,” as the place where blacks and whites meet one another. Snot and her father have an encounter with white people in a mall, as do Arnetta and her mother. This would make sense in 1980s America, a decade where the mall was the premiere setting for American capitalism.
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