The constraints, restraints, hidden threats that we lived under, that were conditions of our lives, inevitably produced mutations in natural human flowering. To me we were like plants that were meant to grow upright but became bent and twisted, stunted, sometimes stretching out and running along ground, because conditions of our forbade our developing upward naturally. --Mary Mebane, (1) first of two autobiographies, begins with one-sentence paragraph, My name is Mary (3). This single line evokes one of other seminal first lines of American literature--Call me Ishmael. Similar to Moby-Dick narrator, Mebane seems simply to be declaring her own presence and individuality. However, by avoiding subject pronoun I, Mebane begins her narrative by creating a distance between herself as object, Mary, and herself as subject, I, emphasizing difference between name and being--between object and subject. Mebane, by avoiding subject position, destabilizes subjectivity of her narrator just as Melville, by avoiding declarative statements, destabilizes reliability of his narrator. While Mebane originally resists subject position, she eventually enters scopic economy and seizes role of observer. By declaring her control of gaze, announces that she is indeed a subject and an individual. (2) Describing her birth as when she opened her eyes to world, Mebane begins half of sentences in second paragraph with I. In second paragraph of work, Mebane embraces and enjoys her subjectivity. Describing an innocent childhood paradise (Weyler 45, Hobson Loneliness 181), Mebane states, the world was a green Eden--and it was magic (3). Sitting on a rock in center of yard--a representative tree of knowledge--Mebane see everything (3). According to Mebane, she liked to look (3). Although second paragraph begins with Mebane developing as a subject in Garden of Eden, it ends with a tragedy--Nonnie Mebane, Mary's mother, brings death into space. (3) Mebane writes, Mama must have told me several thousand times that was going to die with my eyes open, looking (3). Portrayed by her daughter as both an oppressed African American woman and an oppressive matriarchal force, Nonnie asserts her own subjectivity and gaze to supplant subject and force her daughter back into an object position. The primary conflict of narrative emerges in next paragraph, as Mebane attempts to reassert her subjectivity. Indicating a resistance to domestic pressure and limitations, Mebane states, I sat on rock with my back to (3). Acknowledging existing domestic community, Mebane writes, behind me could overhear voices coming from back porch and kitchen (3). However, refusing to heed those (authoritative?) voices, Mebane uses gaze to insist on her own subjectivity and to struggle for ability to define her own identity. By asserting her own selfhood, Mebane finds herself in metaphorical yard--the liminal space between domain of house and wider communities. As an academically gifted African American female growing up in a rural North Carolina town, (4) Mebane constantly finds herself having to negotiate demands of various communities as she attempts to reconcile/unify different aspects of her identity. Living in Wildwood community of Durham County, North Carolina during middle of twentieth century, Mebane must reconcile various demands and pressures placed upon her as a southern African American female. The domestic battles between mother and daughter represent battles Mebane must wage with other communities as she attempts to cultivate an individual identity against class, gender, race, and color pressures. As Karen Weyler states, Mebane's mother eventually stands in as a synecdoche for rest of community, and conflicts with her mother embody her conflicts with environment (46). …