Socioeconomic Status Chapter 1 Summary

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One developmental topic illustrated in Chapter 1 is socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status is a person’s position in society as determined by income, wealth, occupation, education and place of residence. In this chapter, Maya observes that many of the workers that come to the store each morning are cotton pickers, whom at first, are all happy and boastful, bragging to each other how many pounds of cotton they would bring in, but each afternoon they would come back bitter dragging their relatively empty cotton sacks, because no matter how much cotton they had it wouldn’t be enough to make ends meet because their wages are very low to begin with. This illustrates socioeconomic status because it shows that the cotton picker’s position in society…show more content…
Reactive aggression is impulsive retaliation for some intentional or accidental act, verbal or physical, by another person; it is reaction to another child’s behavior. In this chapter, Maya receives a valentine from Tommy Valdon, a nice boy from the town. Maya reacts negatively, because her experience has led her to think that a male having interest in her is necessarily a bad thing. She shows the letter to her friend Louise, and Louise explains that it is a sign of affection, being asked to be a valentine. But Maya tears the note up, and decides to have nothing to do with it. This illustrates reactive aggression because here Maya reacting suddenly without thinking that is impulsively, when she receives the valentine and decides to tear up it. But it’s not surprising that she does so with so much anger and aggression considering her rape experience. Because of her rape experience, it’s only logical that she would react with this instinctive type of anger that she really cannot control. She can only understand Tommy's note in terms of her experience, which has been very traumatic; so, she reacts with as much revulsion to the note as she does to her unpleasant memories. She can only think of male-female relationships in terms of

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