Collier’s ‘‘Sweet Potato Pie’’ is a delightfully subtle, but optimistic, story that portrays the love between two brothers. At its heart, however, it shows the legacy of poverty that hangs over one African American family, even over the one member who has ostensibly escaped that legacy. The structure of the story is also quite remarkable….
Tag: Eugenia Collier
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Setting
Sharecropping The practice of sharecropping consists of tenant farmers who pay the landowner with a portion, or share, of the crops they harvest on their rented land. The system became common in the South during the Reconstruction era (the period following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery). It was a…
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Literary Devices
First-Person Narrator ‘‘Sweet Potato Pie’’ is told by Buddy, the first-person narrator. The reader is privy to all of Buddy’s thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, the other characters can only be seen though Buddy’s perceptions of them. The events in the story, past and present, can only be seen this way as well….
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Themes
Poverty Buddy was raised in poverty. His eldest siblings acted as his parents because his actual parents were working in the fields. Buddy is able to go to school and complete his education not because he is the smartest in the family but because he is the youngest. His older siblings shoulder the burden of…
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Characters
Alberta Alberta is one of Buddy’s older sisters. She is a middle child in the family, as Lil is the eldest daughter. Alberta leaves home at the age of sixteen and moves north in search of work. This was a fairly common phenomenon for poor African Americans living in the South, as the industrial centers…
Sweet Potato Pie – Short Story – Summary
‘‘Sweet Potato Pie’’ is set in both the present and the past, telling the story of the narrator’s day while he simultaneously recalls his childhood. The exact time in which the story is set is unclear, though it is likely the time in which it was written, that is, the 1960s or early 1970s. This…