Bernice Johnson Reagon, writing what she called a cultural autobiography, recalled her childhood in the South in these terms: “My father would work from sunup to sundown/and would come home exhausted/eat, and go to bed/My mother would work from sunup to sundown/would come home/and work from sundown to sunup/to work from sunup to sundown again/The bottom line/When a dress had to be made for a play/if my father did not have the money to buy the material that was it/For mama that was just the beginning/She then had to figure out a way to get the cloth for the dress and/stay up all night making it/for this child to be in this play/It's called/making a way out of no way

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Bernice Johnson Reagon, writing what she called a cultural autobiography, recalled her childhood in the South in these terms: “My father would work from sunup to sundown/and would come home exhausted/eat, and go to bed/My mother would work from sunup to sundown/would come home/and work from sundown to sunup/to work from sunup to sundown again/The bottom line/When a dress had to be made for a play/if my father did not have the money to buy the material that was it/For mama that was just the beginning/She then had to figure out a way to get the cloth for the dress and/stay up all night making it/for this child to be in this play/It's called/making a way out of no way" in the context of "Bettina Aptheker Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience (1989)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.