ABSTRACT
At first, Childress shows Mama in a faithful Mammy role to Mrs. Carter then Mama gives Mrs. Carter her attention like a devoted servant. In this climactic moment, Mama tears up the paper with Florence's address on it, asks the porter for a stamp, and mails Florence a letter that says, Keep trying. Whitney, an interesting choice of names on Childress's part since Whitney appears to be Whitey with negative French inserted within it, linguistically suggesting not white. Childress writes silence into the scripts four times in the space of just one-third of a page, suggesting that silence is yet another language that figures in Mama's social dialect. Therefore, one can see that Childress rewriting Wiletta's character since Wiletta advises John at the start of play that White folks can't stand unhappy Negroes so laugh, laugh when it ain't funny at all. The john calls Black Girlhood and it depicts a charming little girl in Sunday dress and hair ribbon.
