Reader Response to Maya Angelou's "Momma, The Dentist, and Me".

Introduction

Maya Angelou brought to the fore racial bias, and especially, the incredible absurdity of racial segregation. The narrator of the story, a young black girl, goes to seek dental services with her mother, but the dentist is adamant that he does not treat colored people. Despite having a close relationship with Momma and owing to her a few favors, he opts to let the little girl continue suffering because it is against his policy to offer his services to colored people. What Angelou wants the reader to think about is the anguish suffered by colored people, especially blacks, during the era of segregation. I was also amazed at the author's ability to zoom in on the total inhumanity of racial discrimination, the ability to capture how people's beliefs about racial superiority blind them to basic human suffering so that they are able to turn a blind eye even when they could easily help.

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The author also wanted to indicate just how inhumane racists can get. Even more than the Holocaust, and apartheid in South Africa, the essay opens my eyes to the real horrors of racial discrimination. When a dentist utters the words that he'd rather stick his hands up a dog's mouth than a nigger's, the real cruelty of racism is put in very sharp perspective (Angelou, 99).

The author gained my attention by giving the story from the perspective of a small girl, using her rather a childish reasoning as the tone of the essay. That way, I was able to live the story rather than read it. All the injustices and the inhumane treatment of the young innocent girl are much more real when reading from her perspective. The dentist's callousness feels much more wicked when you have first familiarized yourself with the girl, understood her world, cared about her.

Moral outrage is the tactic used to drive the point of the essay home, showing us that racial discrimination is indeed thoughtless and that it turns us into lesser human beings who do not care about the welfare of others. Even more so, the author pulled me in with her perfect juxtaposition of the dentist's kindness to the mother (not in pain or need of any help) versus the lack of sympathy he exhibits while dealing with the little girl. The story was so effective in giving me a wake-up kick because I was first outraged that racial considerations can create such a monster out of anyone.

The most important insight I got was concerning the people who go through racial discrimination. They can see the unfairness of their discriminators, and their suffering as a result of the oppression is real. Despite the goodness the dentist has received from Momma, who saved his clinic with a loan for rental obligations, it was not enough to overcome his sense of superiority or his spite for Negroes (Angelou, 97). I was able to understand that the social mental conditioning that turns people into racial supremacists is greater than the basic human emotions of goodness and kindness.

The middle section of the essay, where Momma grows to become a ten-foot giant and terrifies the dentist and his nurse, also reveals a great deal about people who suffer through racial discrimination. The actions of the mother are probably the girl's fantasy, a reaction to the feeling of hopelessness she felt when her mother was unable to get the dentist to attend to her. It gives an inside look into the utter helplessness of discriminated people and their desire to gain some power and rise above their oppressive situation.

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. Momma, the dentist, and me: I know why the caged bird sings. New York: Bantam Books, 1993