“I am born in Ohio but / the stories of South Carolina already run / like rivers / through my veins.”

Woodson connects to the Southern side of her family early on, without having yet visited the South. She gets this sense from her Southern mother, and also from her paternal grandmother, another transplanted Southerner. The river analogy appears elsewhere in this book, as a way of evoking divided family loyalties. It can suggest sustenance and continuity, but also division and restlessness. 

“I don’t know if these hands will become / Malcolm’s—raised and fisted / or Martin’s—open and asking / or James’s—curled around a pen.” 

The question of how to be a revolutionary and to best effect social change is one theme in this memoir. Woodson is pulled between different examples of powerful Black figures, both in the world and within her own family. 

“They’ll say / Thomas Woodson expected the best of us.”

Woodson’s father has a strong, proud sense of his ancestry, which he tries to transmit to his children. He believes that if they inherit his pride, they will develop a sense of their own worth and will make their way in the world. His sense of family is different from Woodson’s mother’s sense of her own Southern family, which has more to do with nurturing and comfort and less to do with pride and expectations.