The story starts off with Maya and Bailey both being young. They were three and four, with Bailey being the older one. They live in California with their dad, but he ships them off to live with their grandmother. She's a store owner in Stamps, Arkansas. The store is one of those places that everyone congregates at. Kind of like a coffee shop in a small town, or something to that effect. Uncle Willie, their uncle not mine, is crippled and has a deformed body. This makes it difficult for him to make any kind of living at all. It was a pain for men who weren't cripples, to make money, making it twice as hard for him to do the same task. .
Maya finds that reading is fun for her. I don't know why anyone would take up reading as a hobby. It doesn't make sense, reading is one of those things that is only practiced with force is applied. the author that she's most in love with is Shakespeare. This is something that she keeps to her self because she thinks her grandmother will disapprove of her fondness for a white man. The white sheriff rides up to the store one night, and tells them to keep Willie out of sight because some black guy messed with a white woman earlier. The white folk were probably going to take out their anger on the black part of town. They decided the best place to hide Willie was underneath a lot of vegetables in a lil" wagon thing. .
Maya doesn't really like the fact that her grandmother is so respectful to the white people. The little white girls are so disrespectful to her, that they do a hand stand to prove that they"re not wearing any underwear. The arrival of the Depression has made things around Stamps even worse. The black people didn't have much money to begin with, and the depression is doing nothing but hurting their money situations. The money thing makes Christmas a difficult time. Bailey and Maya both receive presents from their parents. It was weird for the kids because they hadn't seen or heard from their parents since they were sent away.