“Since Emancipation, there’re not enough workers. Almost everyone young enough, without gnarled, crinkly brown hands, has gone north.”

Jewell Parker Rhodes establishes the historical context of Sugar from the start. In the 1870s, America was in its “Reconstruction” period, which saw a nation desperate to heal from the aftermath of its Civil War. As a result, many younger people who were formerly enslaved migrated to the northern states, seeking a new home and a fresh start. This led to a drastic shortage of workers for farms, roles that were eventually filled by Chinese immigrants. These are the circumstances that initiate the plot of Sugar.

“Then I start to cry. Sugar is my name.”

At the beginning of the novel, Sugar despises her name. She has come to associate “sugar” with the plantation where her family was enslaved, and the toll it took on her deceased mother. Sugar refuses to eat sugar, and instead only eats savory foods, and longs to be free of life at River Road, where she must work to earn her keep with Mister and Missus Beale.

“‘You’re free now, Sugar’ Ma would say, but warned, ‘Stay away from the big house. Trouble follows where you’re not wanted. And [B]lack folks are never wanted.’”

Emancipation freed people who had been enslaved, but President Lincoln’s new law did not suddenly solve racism in America. Sugar, who spent half of her life enslaved and half of her life as a paid worker for her former enslaver, grew up hearing about how she would be treated if she tried to befriend the Wills family.