44 pages • 1 hour read
Vince VawterPaperboy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Socio-Historical Context: Memphis at the Start of the Civil Rights Movement
Paperboy takes place in 1959 in Memphis, Tennessee. This was a contentious time and place to live in politically, positioned in the Southern United States at the inception of the civil rights movement. The enforced racial segregation of Jim Crow laws was still in place at this time, which the novel deals with explicitly in the scenes with Mam and Victor, particularly when they ride the bus. Within the novel, Victor assumes the role of reader-surrogate, questioning and interrogating the “fairness” of Jim Crow laws. As Victor says, regarding the Jim Crow laws about bussing, “I know a kid is supposed to respect grown-ups who make the rules and also respect God who knows how everything is supposed to work but I couldn’t get over the feeling that neither one of them was doing a very good job” (140). Victor empathizes with the civil rights movement not just because of Mam but also because of his own identity as someone with a speech disorder. He is subjugated because of how his speech disorder positions him due to prevalent social hierarchies, so he recognizes that Black people also struggle to be recognized by white people. Victor understands what it feels like to be rejected due to something outside of your own control, and part of his arc throughout the novel is realizing the differences in treatment between white people and Black people in his part of the South—which, at the end, includes his repulsion at his mother’s anti-integration ideology. In 1954, racially segregated schools were declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, but integration was met with opposition, and schools in the South were desegregated slowly.
Authorial Context: Vince Vawter
Vince Vawter was born in Paris, Tennessee, and grew up affected by a stutter; he writes in his author’s note, “My first recollection of my stutter is just before I was five. I have been stuttering—sometimes fiercely, sometimes gently—for more than sixty years now” (223). After spending 40 years working at various roles in newspapers, he became a full-time novelist; Paperboy, Vawter’s first novel, is based on his own experiences as a child in Memphis during this time period. Vawter’s background as a newspaper reporter affects his writing style in the book; the prose in Paperboy focuses on objective facts and experiences rather than analyzing subjective internal states. Paperboy is true to the experience of children with speech disorders, particularly in the ways that they might be dismissed by classmates and adults and considered less intelligent than other children without speech disorders. Vawter wrote much of his own life into the novel, which helps generate its conversational tone, as well as the verisimilitude of the rendering of Memphis from this time period. By the end of the novel, Victor has decided to work as a newspaper reporter and is encouraged to do so by Mam. In writing this, Vawter aims to show other kids with speech difficulties that there is a path for them; this text makes an effort to see and understand people with speech disorders, and Vawter’s background underscores this effort.
