Why do you think Opal kept cultural knowledge and family stories from the boys? At the end of chapter 25, Opal asks herself that question. What is the reasoning behind her shift in opinion?
Parents and grandparents have a fierce need to protect the children in their care from harm. While it is sad and infuriating that one’s heritage might be a source of grief and pain, it is nonetheless so that in a world dominated by another culture or group of people, it may come to seem that the only way to survive is assimilation to that dominant culture. This is the very nature of colonialism, not just to steal land and kill those who were on it, but to eradicate any vestige of difference that might induce them to assert a claim to it.
I think she was trying, like most parents do, to shelter the boys. However, I think her decision to do that backfired. Orange’s premise is that our culture and history is in our bones, it is who we are. The boys needed to have that nurtured in a direct and healthy way. It also could have been that she didn’t feel like she knew the culture herself. Going to the community center was one way she tried to address that. She had no reason to truly understand her history since there was no real lineage to pass it on.
I agree that Opal was trying to be protective of the boys, and maybe also burying what she knew of the past was necessary to her moving forward, creating a more stable life for herself. But she changes her mind when she reads the family papers in the box that Maxine passed on to her. She realizes that in a way she had been blaming her family for their perceived weakness… for their not passing down the language and traditions.Until she reads their letters, “I hadn’t considered everything that had happened. How far back it’d been happening to us…prisoners of a war that didn’t stop even when it stopped. Was still being fought…I was part of the fight too.So were my grandchildren.”
This is her “aha” moment, to see her family as fighters, not simply victims, that there is meaning and purpose beyond mere survival. “The culture sings. The culture dances. The culture keeps telling stories that… bring you back better made.” She decides to be part of that, as her mother chose to be, despite being raised by a white woman. She sees her heritage as a source of strength and pride and purpose that her
grandchildren need.