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Junebug go to town on that “naked” and we rolling. Then Miss Moore ask what it cost. So we all jam into the window smudgin it up and the price tag say $300. So then she ask how long’d take for Big Butt and Junebug to save up their allowances. “Too long,” I say. “Yeh,” adds Sugar, “outgrown it by that time.”.
“The Lesson” follows the children on a trip to FAO Schwarz, a famous toy store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan that was known for its expensive deluxe toys. Read the full story summary, an in-depth character analysis of Sylvia, and explanations of important quotes from “The Lesson.”
“The Lesson” begins with a presumably older Sylvia looking back on her childhood, and how, from her perspective, everyone else is wrong, and she and her best friend and cousin Sugar are “the only ones just right.”
The Lesson Summary. “The Lesson” takes place in New York City in the mid-20th century and centers on a group of Black children from Harlem and their self-appointed teacher, Miss Moore, who is also Black. One of the kids, a girl named Sylvia, is particularly frustrated with Miss Moore, whom she finds patronizing and annoying.
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Analysis. The narrator (whose name is later revealed to be Sylvia) recalls a period from her childhood when an older, college-educated woman moved into her neighborhood. Sylvia and her friend Sugar mock the woman because of her “nappy hair” and “proper speech.”
Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” takes place in New York City sometime in the mid-20th century. The narrator, Sylvia, is a young Black girl whose family moved to Harlem from the South, where it’s likely that they lived under Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation.
