Natasha Tretheway, the author of the poem "White Lies", reflects back to her childhood being an African American amongst wealthy white folks, who is trying to fit in with their ethnicity or society of having finer things in life than what her community has. The poem is titled "White Lies" because Tretheway introduces us to how growing up she told harmful lies expressing that she could pass as a white person because of her skin tone. Based off of the first stanza she uses examples known to be slang, like for instance in lines 3 and 4 she says, “light-bright, near-white, high-yellow, red-boned.” These examples prove her indication of having light color pigment and she thought that she could use it to her advantage in emphasizing her lie of being white. As the story goes on Natasha gives specific details in the second stanza saying, "pink and green shanty-fied shotgun section along the tracks". Her description of a home, which we could assume that it is her home, differ from what she tells the white folks, saying she …show more content…
She explains that when her mother would find out she washes her mouth with Ivory soap, which contains a creamy white color and her mother would say "This is to purify and cleanse your lying tongue." Natasha then admits to believing her and thought that swallowing suds of the soap would purify her from the inside out. Basically meaning that she hoped to become fully white and purified so she would not have to lie about it. Even though now she realizes what she use to do was wrong, back then she felt like you could not live wealthy or better without you being white and in some cases that statement is true. Black Americans could only have so much and during the time of serious racism the white community was the dominant factor. Natasha's poem just reveals to the audience of how racism back then influenced some of the black youth living in that