Critical Source:
- Ostrom, Hans. Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1993.
Discussion starters
- What is the effect of calling the child "it" by the gossipers?
- Why are these ladies a part of the Salvation Rock Ladies' Missionary Society for the Rescue o' the African Heathen? What resonances do you find in the name?
- Why does the story take place in March?
- In "Little Dog" Hughes intimates the shame of a white woman desiring a black man; in "Mother and Child" he finally allows a white woman to bear a black child. Why does he place this story so deeply in the collection and why is this relationship "worse" than, say, Clarence's fathering a child with a black woman in "Red-Headed Baby"?