It was a sunny afternoon, my friend and I were having a little talk, and she brought up the topic that she had an abnormal fear of the opposite sex, mentioning that she felt uncomfortable whenever she talked to men. She added that she was too anxious to look at their eyes or faces that she sweated every time she did. I tried to help her by suggesting a few reasonable causes of her phobia: the divorce of her parents, raised up by her mother all alone, studying in girl’s school and the forbiddance of young love in Chinese culture. All these factors further isolated her from making appropriate contacts with the opposite sex in her puberty. In fact, these social institutions, such as family, education, economics, social network, culture, environment,…show more content… Her discontentment can be demonstrated by her friendship with her best and only white friend, Misty. Leonie once expresses her resentment sourly by saying, “I’m Black and she (Misty)’s White, and if someone heard us tussling and decided to call the cops, I’d be the going to jail. Not her” (36). Although Misty and Leonie share many similarities together, for example, they both do drugs, have a partner from another race and work at the same place, Misty can easily take advantages from the white supremacist society while Leonie suffers. Having a higher socioeconomic status and her harmony with socializing with upper-class white people reveal Misty’s life is much easier than Leonie’s. Leonie has feelings of both envy and inferiority to white people at the same time. Her inferiority can be illustrated by her obsessive love for Michael. Mam once scolds Leonie for her over-dedication to Michael, “Every time you say something, you look at him like a little puppy dog. Like you waiting for him to pet you” (154). Growing up in racist Mississippi, black people are taught that white people are always their “masters”. The forbidden interracial love of Michael makes Leonie feel like she is special, and she would be nothing without Michael. Therefore, she does everything to please him and she loses herself in this
