Read the following paragraph and answer the questions after each paragraph.

Question

Recently, a white woman from Texas, who would quickly describe herself as a liberal, asked me about my hometown. When I told her that in Stamps my grandmother had owned the only Negro general merchandise store since the turn of the century, she explained, “Why, you were a debutante.” Ridiculous and even ludicrous. But Negro girls in small Southern towns, whether poverty-stricken or just munching along on a few of life’s necessities, were given as extensive and irrelevant preparation for adulthood as rich white girls shown in magazines. Admittedly the training was not the same. While white girls learned to waltz and sit gracefully with a teacup balanced on their knees, we were lagging behind, learning the mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them. (Come and see Edna Lomax spending the money she made picking cotton on five balls of ecru tatting thread. Her fingers are bound to snag the work, and she’ll have to repeat the stitches time and time again. But she knows that when she buys the thread.)
—Maya Angelou
1. What is the paragraph’s main idea?
2. What topics is Angelou comparing and contrasting? List the points for each topic.
3. Does the author organize the paragraph by topics or by points of comparison?

Answer 1

1. In the past, Southern Negro girls were taught the same values as rich white girls but had no money to indulge these values.
2. White girls
Black girls
given an “extensive and irrelevant preparation for adulthood”
given an “extensive and irrelevant preparation for adulthood” preparation for adulthood”
learned to waltz
learned mid-Victorian values
learned to sit gracefully with a teacup on their knee
No money to indulge these values
3. By points of comparison