Sweetness - by Toni Morrison (MW) by Kimberly Allison

Sweetness

lorenjaz000 — 2025-04-28 13:59:04 UTC

What really stood out to me is how she mostly cared about how people will react to her daughters color. Instead of enduring it she chose to dislike her own daughter over it.

2025-04-28 13:59:49 UTC

What stood out to me the most was even though she always felt like she wanted to leave her baby but never actually did. And we see how she did what she could to protect her daughter even if she was ruff on her. And then see the consequences of how she treated her daughter, now her daughter pushes her away. But in the end her daughter is having a baby and she knows once her daughter has that baby she'll see the world differently like she did.

daviljas002 — 2025-04-28 14:00:01 UTC

I believe the main message of the passage "Sweetness" is to always try and protect your child from all the harms of the world, even if they end up hating you. What stood out to me the most was that Lula Ann kept sending money to her mother, even if she didn't visit her, Ann still probably cared for her mother.

Sweetness

2025-04-28 14:01:04 UTC

I think the main message in Sweetness is that when people are taught to hate themselves or others because of things like skin color, it can really mess up families and relationships especially since there would be families having generational trauma leading that habit to the next. Sweetness thought she was protecting her daughter by being tough on her, but really, she was hurting her without even realizing it. She was so scared of the world treating Lula Ann badly that she treated her badly first. It shows how racism and colorism can get passed down, even by people who think they’re trying to help.

What stood out to me the most was when Sweetness admitted she almost smothered her baby right after she was born, that part honestly shocked me because you don’t expect a mom to think something like that. It shows how deep her fear and shame ran through her because of her family.

2025-04-28 14:01:28 UTC

Through bitter circumstances and hardships, always treat your kids right, even if it's tough. What stood out to me is the fact the she can understand why her daughter treats her now even if for her point she was trying to protect her daughter.

Sweetness

2025-04-28 14:05:10 UTC

I think that the main idea of this story and the message that it wants to send out is how parenting matters and how people would get discriminated for the color of their skin. Something that stood out to me is how Lula Ann could'nt even call her her own mother "mom" instead she had to call her "Sweetness" and when she was older she wrote her a letter calling her "S."

Sweetness response

alvaljim000 — 2025-04-28 14:05:26 UTC

I believe that the main message of Sweetness by Toni Morrison is colorism and its generational trauma. When the story firs opens, we see how the mother of Luna Ann reacted to the color of her skin, stating that it was a light brown almost white passing but soon turned black as tar. Her mother did not know how to react and decided to smother the baby until she stopped. Her mother grew up with a white passing grandmother who left her family after they all came out black, as for her own mother she was white passing as well and had a white husband. Overall, she came from a white passing family but when her own child was born, she was faced with the conflicts of racing a child she did not want. The story continues to tell us how her own views of colorism impacted her child, she wanted to protect her from the world, but her methods were not right. She was tough on her child because of her skin, claiming that it was for protecting but her own child could not call her mama. As we finish up the story, we see how the child was negatively affected by her mother’s actions and how she was placed in a nursing home because of how her mother treated her growing up. To conclude the main point of the story is to talk about the impact of colorism and how skin tine has such an effect on people because sin is perceived as a beauty standard and not a physical one. The story focus on telling the reader that the mother did what she did because her child was born different from the rest of her past ancestor and therefore should be held at a lower stander then them and be ready to face the world.

Something I found interesting is the mother understanding that what she did was wrong but still choosing to neglect her own past and her actions. Even mentioning that her daughter might have married a black man and to prey for her child. But still claiming that times have changed. She lacks to understand the trauma that she placed on her daughter because she believes it made her who she is. But in reality, it is generational colorism that leads to the separations of families because people cannot fathom their own children being different.

Sweetness

2025-04-30 14:07:32 UTC

The mother's tone is particularly torn, and her justifications for her actions are both painful and unsettling. Her acts demonstrate how deeply ingrained racism has affected her values, even if it is evident that she feels she behaved out of love and necessity. This story brings to perspective the the central idea which revolves around the complexities of race, colorism, and motherhood, particularly within the Black community.

2025-05-01 14:10:29 UTC

Sweetness gives the readers an idea of how rasses people were back in the day, giving the main message of parenting hood and racism. One of the scripts that caught my attention was Toni Morrison; in her head, she was considered white, and her parents taught her as white. As soon as Lula was born, they treated her differently for her mom's safety, and she grew up with her mom, even if her mom felt bad or didn't treat her right

Sweetness

2025-05-01 15:02:40 UTC

Toni Morrison grew up in a population where white and black people were separated, treated as white person. Lula was Toni's daughter, that was a blue-black skin tone. Having a mindset of skin tone, Toni was in a position she didn't want, not treating her daughter as such since she had a different skin tone. Moral of the story, Toni was racist to her daughter in a way, did sirten things differently for her safety, in a way, treating her daugther differently. In my opinion, mom shouldn't have treated her daughter as rough as she did.