Setting
What is Nashville?
This means to take in a deep breath.
What is "inhale"?
This is the speaker of the poem.
Who is "a troubled little girl"?
This is what the troubled little girl does when she goes to a bookstore.
What is inhale the odor of new books?
This was how the little girl listened to music at night.
What is on her portable, tucked under her pillow?
A place in the poem where the speaker likes to go.
What is The Library or the bookstore?
This is a long pathway or hallway.
What is a corridor?
The person whom the little girl lives with.
Who is her grandma?
How the troubled little girl feels when she is at her grandmother's.
What is safe and warm?
What is "not until 3 pm, 5 pm on Sundays"?
This is where the speaker liked to sit with her books.
This means "the last option when nothing else works or is possible."
What is "resort"?
This is the name of the librarian at the Carnegie Library.
Who is Mrs. Long?
What the little girl and neighbors do on Sundays.
What is sit on the front porch, talking?
Mrs. Long feels this way when she goes uptown to borrow special books.
What is "humiliated"?
This is the approximate decade in which the story takes place.
What is the 1950s or 1960s?
This means "to make another person feel shame or publicly injure their self-respect."
What is "humiliate"?
These people like to humiliate southern Blacks.
Who are southern whites?
Mrs. Long does this when she does not have the books the little girl wants.
What is she goes to the big library uptown?
This is how Mrs. Long treats the little girl.
What is like she is special, or she wants to protect her?
When black people and white people are legally separated in schools, stores, libraries, neighborhoods, etc., it is called this.
What is segregation?
What is "situation"?
These people gather on the porch to discuss the political situation.
Who are the neighbors?
This is what the people do when they see the preacher on Sundays.
What is "they congratulate him"?
What is Tennessee?