child labor Quotes

“Can’t they work?” he asked me. “Look at all the pecan trees.” [. . .] “Get them off their lazy butts, they can make enough for a dozen toothbrushes in one evening.” “That money usually goes to helping the family, Dr. Joseph.”

“I’d never known it was like this for a woman. Never. We’d always been sent to Aunt Josie’s when Mamma’s time was near. We would stay there overnight, and when we came back, there was Mamma smiling with a new baby in her arms.”

“Why don’t they tell the truth? Why don’t they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow’s eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won’t come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it?”