Village books

"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
satire.
"Heah in Niggertown?"
Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
do when they become dramatically serious.
Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers.


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