Childhood

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1989

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Childhood

Childhood in Walker’s poem is established in Line 1 with “[w]hen I was a child (Line 1). As a theme, childhood stands for the moments of the past that set the foundation for adulthood in terms of beliefs and understanding of the world. The speaker in “Childhood” recounts a memory that represents the speaker’s upbringing. The memory is the knowledge of “red miners” (Line 1), indicating the speaker brushed shoulders with the men who worked the mines. Far from a childhood built on playing in parks, going to school, and socializing with friends, the speaker’s childhood instead is rooted in the “Ishkooda mines” (Line 4) where they watched men “come down red hills to their camps” (Line 3). The speaker’s childhood is full of fear, terror, and a ragged, dissatisfied community.

Written from the perspective of an adult reflecting on their childhood, the theme of childhood in Walker’s poem represents the moments one remembers that make one into an adult. In the case of “Childhood,” the moments are stark, depressing, and dark. They’re grounded in the harsh honesty of the conditions that those who worked the mines (and their families) lived in. While the child might not completely understand everything they were observing, the adult speaker looking back on the memory recognizes the harshness of their childhood. Represented by dark, ominous imagery (“Night after night” [Line 5] and “moonlight hovered over ripe haystacks” [Line 10]), this depiction of childhood is far from happy, peaceful, or safe.

By titling the poem “Childhood” Walker comments on the injustices of the area—an area that is no place for a child to be raised. With threads of protest strung throughout the poem (“croppers’ rotting shacks” [Line 11]; “famine, terror, flood” [Line 12]), the speaker’s childhood is a memory of terror, injustice, and struggle, which represents the life of the miners and the majority of the lives of Black Americans during this time.

Struggle

Through imagery and symbolism Walker establishes the theme of struggle in “Childhood.” Established in the first stanza through the set scene, struggle as a theme reflects on the unjust lives of the miners, the unsafe and unclean working conditions, and the long days spent in the mines. This struggle extends to the miners’ families and to the community as a whole, as evidenced by the speaker whose life revolved around the comings and goings of the miners from the mines. Through imagery—including the “red miners / dressed raggedly” (Lines 1-2) and “the swing of their dinner buckets in their hands” (Line 7)—Walker establishes the theme of struggling. The life of the Ishkooda miners is far from easy. It’s defined by living in mining camps, working “[n]ight after night” (Line 5), and a sense of dissatisfaction (“grumbling undermining all their words” [Line 8]).

Through this theme, Walker illustrates a specific location (Birmingham, Alabama) and a time (the speaker’s childhood) in which Black Americans worked long, difficult hours in unsafe working citations (iron ore mines). Despite working long days, the quality of life did not improve. Instead, the workers, their families, and their communities suffered from “famine, terror, flood, and plague” (Line 12) and the area was rife with “sentiment and hatred” (Line 13). This inferior quality of life sets the scene for Walker’s protest poem, which argues that this is no way for a community to exist, let alone for a child to live. By starkly illustrating the struggle of the Ishkooda miners, Walker’s speaker emphasizes the struggle of all Black Americans during this period who lacked civil rights and were largely—despite the outcome of the Civil War—treated like slaves.

American South

The American South is a theme in poetry and literature that comments on many topics, including freedom, slavery, and injustice. The South is where the majority of the American Civil War was fought in the mid 1800s, which resulted in the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln, freeing all slaves. The history of slavery in the South continued, however, resulting in decades of share cropping, which is defined as “a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities” (“Sharecropping.” PBS.org.). Following the Civil War, many Black families in the South became sharecroppers, which resulted in a new form of slavery. Known for poor working and living conditions with little to no rights, the American South as a theme represents much of what Walker acknowledges in the second stanza of her poem.

Taking place in Birmingham, Alabama—where the Ishkooda mines are located—Walker’s poem “Childhood” recognizes the troubles the people of the American South faced, calling attention to the injustices of the workers and the poor working conditions. Stanza 2 opens with the line “I also lived in low cotton country” (Line 9), which shifts the poem from talking about the miners to talking about the American South as a whole. This line indicates that the speaker lived in an area where cotton plantations and slavery existed. By including this line, the speaker acknowledges the history of the landscape and the hard lives of those living on it—past and present. As referenced above, the American South was where most of the battles of the Civil War were fought, leaving the land ravaged and the towns torn apart post-war. More so, the area entered a phase of rebuilding and redefining as slavery was outlawed and new forms of working agreements (such as sharecropping) emerged. Walker’s speaker references these themes of the American South in the final lines of the poem, highlighting the difficult life of the Black Americans who lived there: “with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by; / where sentiment and hatred still held sway” (Lines 12-13), with the “sentiment and hatred” (Lines 13) referring to those who did not agree with the outcome of the Civil War and the end of slavery.