“The Lesson” is a short story by Toni Cade Bambara that revolves around African American children from Harlem, exposed to a new world beyond their impoverished community by a volunteer teacher, Miss Moore. She takes them to an exotic toy store on Fifth Avenue, mainly for whites. This trip is a critical lesson for all these kids concerning the economic inequality between white and black neighborhoods. Most of them are raised in Harlem projects, underdeveloped areas with poor education, and limited access to jobs. In “The Lesson,” Toni Cade Bambara explores the ignorance of African-American children on wealth disparity besides resolving it with Miss Moore’s trip to a toy shop in their company but the protagonist stays adamant, as portrayed by her use of Black English dialect throughout the narration.
Many Black children live, grow and die in the most economically alienated areas of the country. These kids rarely travel beyond their communities, thus lacking a wider view of social and economic issues. In Bambara’s story, Sylvia, the narrator, describes their community as a place where “the winos…cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask” (1). The winos are homeless alcoholics, which paints the poverty levels in this side of Harlem. Children raised in these places have fewer opportunities to learn, develop and travel beyond. Hence, they become unaware of social issues, like poverty or wealth inequality affecting their community.
