imitation of life summary

However, Annie's problems start when Sarah Jane tries to pass as white.When they first meet, Lora Meredith and Annie Johnson have a good deal in common. Fast forward 10 years, and Lora is now a Broadway star.

However, her mother is always quick to point out that Sarah Jane is her daughter, and this hinders her.

She hires an African American woman, Annie Johnson, as a maid. Annie is an African American woman who desperately wants a healthy home environment in which to raise her daughter. And for the Johnsons, the issue is Peola taking action to run away from her life as a black woman, wanting to pass as white. Summaries A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter; the two women start a successful business, but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way. The Imitation of Life is one of the most powerful cinematic displays of racial passing in movie history. Lora is an aspiring model and actress who needs someone to look after Susie when she goes out on photo shoots or casting calls. While Annie is devoted to her daughter and would do anything for her, the fair-skinned Sara Jane is resentful of the racism around her and does everything to hide her origins.It looks like we don't have a Synopsis for this title yet.

Appearance is a central theme throughout the story.

As the girls grow into young womanhood and go away to college - Peola specifically to one catering to blacks in the South - issues arise which threaten to tear each family apart largely as the girls now have the power to do what they will.

Delilah, her ever-loyal black maid, sticks with her through thick and thin. Set in the 1910s at "the Shore" of New Jersey, the novel explores issues of race and class in early 20th-century America. Bea Chipley is a quiet, mousy Atlantic City teenage girl whose mother dies, leaving her to keep house for her father (Mr. Chipley) and Benjamin Pullman, a boarder who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk and sells maple syrupdoor-to-door. For the Pullmans, the issue surrounds what may be the first true loves each has experienced in her life, Bea's with Elmer's friend, ichthyologist Stephen Archer. The child care side of the equation is addressed when she meets a black woman named Delilah Johnson, who is looking for a housekeeping job primarily for room and board which includes for her light skinned daughter, Peola Johnson. They are both single mothers struggling to make a life for themselves and their daughters, Susie and Sarah Jane. As Lora's career blossoms, she spends less and less time with Susie. Neurotic and obnoxious, Sarah Jane doesn't like being Black; since she's light-skinned (her father was practically white), she spends the rest of the film trying to pass as white, much to her mother's heartache and shame. A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter; the two women start a successful business, but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.Bea Pullman and her daughter Jessie have had a hard time making ends meet since Bea's husband died. Each woman has an intolerable daughter. That successful business morphs, based on a suggestion by a down and out customer named Elmer Smith who becomes their partner, into an even more successful venture selling the pancake flour mix for home use. Their relationships with their daughters, however, become strained. There are multiple ways to … This is to her advantage because of the racist laws and social mores of the time. Spanning several decades, Imitation of Life follows Bea Pullman as she goes from sheltered teenage girl to business mogul.