Uses exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech.

It is a visual symbolism, or figurative language that evokes a mental image of the object.

This figure of speech makes reference to an object, person or place unrelated to the context. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection.

This figure of speech gives human characteristics to something non-human, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.

This figurative device is a phrase or a group of words established by having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words or expression.

This figure of speech uses words to convey a meaning that is opposite of what is actually said.

Words or expression that are informal in nature and generally represent a certain region or time.

My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, plaiting and re-plaiting so that now my scalp tingles. Whenever I turn my head quickly, my nose fills with the faint smell of Dixie Peach hair grease.

hear what must be the singing and talking of all the children in the world,

Just inside the front door, women out of the advertisements in Ebony are greeting other parents and children.

One monkey don’t stop no show

She is enveloped in a perfume that I only know is not gardenia

my mother says. ”If I’da wanted her someplace else, I’da took her there.”

”Don’t stare,” my mother says to me. ”You know better than that.”

She’s to be my teacher, she tells my mother. My mother stares.