The Power of the Yam

 The Power of the Yam

Addison McClure

At the beginning of chapter 13 the narrator has an intense realization as he eats a yam he has purchased at a street vendor. The yam he purchases is described in great detail. He says he could already see it was sweet because “bubbles of brown syrup had broken burst the skin”. This is obviously a food that he is fond of. The narrator after biting into the yam is suddenly catapulted into a flurry of thoughts. He first feels homesick. The yam is a taste he remembers from his childhood. The homesickness transitions into an overwhelming feeling of freedom. He feels in control of himself. The narrator unapologetically eats the yam and he imagines confronting those who once mocked him. He then spirals into a fantasy of confronting Bledsoe and exposing him to the world. He makes himself laugh at the thought of Bledsoe crumbling with his facade. He continues his train of thought contemplating how him proudly eating a yam gives him power. 

One passage from the text that particularly stood out to me happens as he is leaving the street vendor. The narrator thinks to himself, “What and how much had I lost trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do”. Those words can hit deep for a lot of people. It is a depressing moment when you realize how much time you have wasted being unhappy to please someone else, just to find out that they do not even care. The narrator is having a lot more fun being himself. Just a simple activity of eating a yam brought him so many intense emotions which included a brilliant sense of freedom. He has spent so much time acting differently for others and hoping happiness would come with a big success, but he comes to find that his own mind is worth so much more than he is given credit for. 

His yam revelation is a milestone in his life. As we read more I predict and have already seen that his newfound sense of self worth is going to help him to stand up for himself or at least question the authority around him. We know where he is going to eventually end up. So I can use that evidence to pretty confidently say that the yam is a turning point for him. Though the narrator may seem intense and crazy in this scene, I feel that his thoughts are completely logical.


Comments

  1. MitchellSeptember 27, 2021 at 7:21 AM

    This is a good explication of what a generally positive and identity-affirming scene this is. Of course, this moment of self-awareness and identity-embrace is short-lived, as the narrator will immediately after stumble onto the eviction scene, which leads to a chain of events that has him getting a "new name" and being told to cut all ties to his family and to the community of Harlem. All of this good identity-work is quickly out the window.

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  2. SallySeptember 28, 2021 at 9:00 AM

    I definitely also see this moment as a turning point for the narrator. It's unfortunate to see him not question the authority around him as he takes the new job just to become a money-motivated character similar to Bledsoe. It's such a refreshing moment to see genuine happiness from the narrator. He's unembarrassed and so open to expressing his true emotions.

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  3. JanakiSeptember 30, 2021 at 2:00 PM

    I think you summed up the importance of this moment for the narrator really well. I also thought at first that this was a completely weird scene and why he's spending so much time describing the yam - however, the more he talks about it and how it makes him feel, I realized that it showed his moment of 'transformation' and his start in a direction of questioning his identity. It's also a scene which counteracts the scene in the earlier chapter where he denies the pork chops and grits (which he really wants) for the toast and coffee to try to assume an identity that's really not his.

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