Content Warning: This Symbols and Motifs section includes references to the sexual assault of children and physical abuse.

The most significant inheritance that Allison received from her mother on Ruth’s death includes photographs that symbolize Allison’s relationship to her family, particularly the women in her family. Allison incorporates these photos in the memoir and uses them to deepen her representation of women in her family and herself as something more than the stereotypical Southern woman (an unloved, unbeautiful source of labor and children). For example, Allison includes photos of her mother as a traditionally beautiful and happy adolescent, as a stylishly dressed young woman, as a smiling young mother and (eventually) as the buttoned-up, sometimes dour Gibson family matriarch. By showing her mother at these different ages, Allison reinforces the notion that Southern women evolve—rather than being frozen in the past and incapable of being agents in their own lives—no matter how limited their choices due to economic inequality.

In addition, Allison uses photos to highlight gaps and silences in the stories that the Gibson family members told about themselves. Ruth, for example, was unable or unwilling to provide the names of family members, likely because some trauma or scandal was attached to the people in the photos.