Slaves - “For My People”
The slaves are unequivocally subjugated for they are “lending their strength to the years, to the gone years and the now years and the maybe years,/washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending/hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching/dragging along never gaining never reaping never/knowing and never understanding.” Walker calculatedly omits commas between the activities that the slaves undertake to accentuate the undisrupted longevity of their repression.
Red - “Childhood”
Walker repeats the motif of red in “Childhood” Walker recounts: “When I was a child I knew red miners/dressed raggedly and wearing carbide lamps./I saw them come down red hills to their camps with red dust from old Ishkooda mines.”The repetitive red intensifies the ubiquity of objectionable mining that Walker perceived during her childhood. The omnipresent red indicates that the superintendents of the mining wrecked the land obstinately.
Believer - "We Have Been Believers"
The speaker asserts, “We have been believers believing in our burdens and our demigods too long. Now the needy no longer weep and/pray; the long-suffering arise, and our fists bleed/against the bars with a strange insistency.” The term ‘believers' connotes fervent, sustained commitment. The belief system is essentially so pervasive that the believers are unconscious of their predicaments.
