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Chapter 27
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mighty Miss Malone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Hope
Talent and Hard Work
Family
The Black Experience in America
The Great Depression
Summary
Analysis
After Mrs. Malone goes to work that night, Deza puts on her gingham jumper, writes a note, and takes enough money for bus fare to Detroit from under the mattress. By 10:00 p.m., she’s standing behind a tree across from what Mr. Zee has told her is the New Turned Leaf. Deza is nervous. Mr. Zee told her a nightclub is like a speakeasy, and all her life she’s heard terrible things about speakeasies. This just looks like a normal rich-person house, except that every few minutes, parties of well-dressed men and women show up and walk down a side path toward the back of the house. When a drunk man stumbles outside, vomits in the grass, then traipses off into the darkness, Deza sees an opportunity to slip through the door he imperfectly closed behind him. She walks down a short hallway and through a second door.
It's a testament to how much Deza loves her brother that she is willing to risk angering or worrying her mother in order to find him. It’s also a testament to how much her time in the homeless camp changed her outlook on life. She’s still nervous to be on her own at the door of a speakeasy (secretive and hidden establishments that illegally sold alcohol when the American government had prohibited its sale between 1920–1933), but she knows her own strength and capabilities.
Themes
