Thesis

Thesis: Williams compares the ways in which she, her mother, and Maxine deal with socially de/constructed expectations of their race. In particular, she suggests that their physical appearances are somewhat skillfully assembled each morning in an attempt to protect their identities. Williams parallels the elementary tasks in the women’s daily routines to their greater missions to convey their strategies of “rising above” racism.

Passage I – pg. 716
It is early morning, the day after the Critical Legal Studies conference. Next door, as I write, my mother who is visiting me, rises and prepares to greet the day. She makes lots of little trips to the bathroom, in developing stages of undress then dress. Back and forth, from bedroom to bath, seeking and delivering small things: washcloths, eyeliners, stockings, lipstick. The last trip to the bathroom is always the longest. It is then that she does her face and hair. Next door, I can hear the anxiety of her preparations: the creaking of the floorboards as she stands closer then farther from the mirror; the lifting and placing of infinite bottles and jars on the shelves, in the cabinets; the click of her closing a compact of blush; the running of water over her hairbrush; an anonymous fidgety frequency of sounds. She is in a constancy of small motions, like clatters, soft rattles, and bumps. When she leaves the bathroom at last, she makes one final quick trip to the bedroom, then goes downstairs, completely composed, with small brave steps.
Passage II – pg. 716
When I get up in the morning I stare in the mirror and stick on my roles: I brush my teeth with my responsibility to my community. I buff my nails with paving the way for my race. I comb my hair in the spirit of pulling myself up by my bootstraps. I dap astringent on my pores that I might be a role model upon whom all may gaze with pride. I mascara my eyelashes that I may be “different’ from all the rest. I glaze my lips with the commitment to deny pain and “rise above” racism.
I gaze in the mirror and realize that I am very close to being Maxine. When I am fully dressed, my face is hung with contradictions; I try not to wear all my contradictions at the same time. I pick and choose among them; like jewelry, I hunt for this set of expectations that will go best with that obligation. I am just this close.
Judge Maxine Thomas’s job as black female judge was to wear all the contradictions at the same time-to wear them well and reconcile them. She stretched wide and reconciled them all. She swallowed all the stories, all the roles; she opened wide to all the expectations.
Standing before the mirror, I understand the logic of her wild despair, the rationality of her unbounded rage. I understand the break she made as necessary and immediate; I understand her impatient self protection as the incantation of an ancient and incomprehensible restlessness. Knowing she was to be devoured by life, she made herself inedible, full of thorns and sharp edges.