How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
To this day I have a recurring dream, which fills me each time with a terrible sense of loss and desolation. I see a young, beautiful blond and blue-eyed high school girl moving through a room full of others her own age, much admired by everyone, men and women both, myself included, as I watch through a window. I feel no malice toward this girl. I don't even envy her. Watching, I am simply emptied, and in the dream I want to cry out, because she is something I can never be, some possibility in my life that can never be fulfilled. It is a schoolgirl's dream, one I tell my waking self I've long since outgrown. Yet it persists. (2.21.6-7)
We can say this about Jeanne as a narrator: she's honest. That doesn't mean she isn't contradictory though—after all, right before this paragraph she tells us she "never wanted to change [her]self or to be someone other than [her]self" (2.21.6), but clearly, if her "schoolgirl's dream" still "persists," then something is going on. All of which goes to show that racism isn't always about hate—it can also be about love in a weird way… just maybe not love for your own self.
Quote #11
Papa swung left, and we clattered out onto the wide, empty boulevard that ran the length of the camp, back to where our own baggage waited and the final packing. (3.1.54)
There's no going anywhere without putting in the work. In this case, there's the baggage to deal with—all those decisions about what to take into the next life and what to leave behind. And yes, that's a metaphor for what Jeanne needs to do to prepare herself mentally going forward.