What is Annie John About

Annie John is a story of a life of a young girl and her relationship with her mother. The story starts out with Annie being ten years old and has a very close bond with her mother. During the summer months her mother lets her sleep in, takes hot baths with her and adds herbs and spices to relax them. She takes her into the town and shows her how to shop for produce and get the best prices. Annie sees her mother as very beautiful and very wise. It doesn™t talk much about her father but only that he has many partners and children before her mother and her mother is often yelled at on the streets by these women. One day Annie came home from school to find her parents making love and she feels alone. She is jealous and rejected when she sees them because she feels like she is not part of their union. She really looks at her mother coldly because of this because she felt betrayed of their special relationship.

Annie starts school and finds a girl and quickly becomes best friends with her. The girls name is Gwen. At school Annie is liked by all the teachers because of her good writing skills and good grades and also by all the children because she is good at sports and she stands up for everyone. Annie and Gwen walk to and from school everyday but Annie soon learns that she is using their friendship to ease her feelings of being neglected by her mother, and she also learns that it is not working very well. She then finds another girl to be friends with who calls her self the Red Girl. This girl is not like Annie and starts to get her in trouble. She lies, plays dirty and steals things. Her mom catches her one day with her stolen items and demands that she is showed the rest of the things. Annie denies everything and takes joy in her mother™s inability to find them. The Red Girl soon moves away and Annie learns to grow up.

Annie begins to get bored at school and starts to read ahead in her books. She finds a picture of Christopher Columbus in jail and writes beside it œA great man can no longer move. The teacher finds this and Annie is punished for her improper behavior. She is disciplined at school and then returns home in hope of being comforted by her parents. Only that her parents seem to be to into each other and don™t even realize her misery. Annie now feels complete betrayal of her mother and grows hatred for her. She goes into a state of depressed and is bed ridden for 3 months. No on is able to cure her sickness until her grandmother comes and just sits with her, holding her night after night.

After Annie turned seventeen, she decides to leave Antigua and goes to England to study nursing. On her trip to the boat that is going to separate her from her family, she thinks about her childhood and the love there used to be and realizes there is no room for her at her house anymore. She gets on the boat with big expectations of the future and disregards her parent™s wave™s goodbye