Maya and her brother, Bailey, aged three and four, are sent to their grandmother in Arkansas when their parents divorce. Grandmother, known as "Momma," is a strict woman who loves everyone around her hard with a love that she does not admit to. The children live with her for four years.
Then they go to live for a year with their flighty "Mother Dear" and her gangster-connected family in St. Louis. Mother's boyfriend rapes eight-year-old Maya. When Maya failes to recover sufficiently to talk to anyone but Bailey, the pair of children are shipped back to Momma.
Maya begins to just listen without responding for as long as she can to people who talk to her. Then her love of reading out-loud, and the recognition by Mrs. Flowers who helped her discover books, draws her back into life.
Life rolls on, with picnics and work in Momma's store, as well as work in white women's houses. Maya finds her first friend at age 11 and learns to giggle with the girls.
Momma fears that the South will destroy Maya and Bailey, so they are taken to their mother in California when Maya is about 13. There Maya comes of age, one of the only African Americans in her school, and eight months pregnant at graduation.