The Blues

The story “The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman Feelin Bad” from the book The Big Mama Stories by Shay Youngblood is the story of Miss Blue, who experienced heartbreak and wrote a blues song about it. Listening to this story the narrator is able to learn about love and pain, how you can’t have one without the other. And that at the end of the tunnel, there is always light.

In the beginning of the story, the narrator is sitting in Miss Blue’s porch watching soap operas. Here Miss Blue begins to tell the narrator her heartbreak story. Miss Blue’s story takes place in June of 1923 at a juke joint and at Miss Blue’s mama’s house. In this story we find conflict between two people, Miss Blue and Bo Willie. These two characters face conflict because on the day they were supposed to get married, Bo Willie left Miss Blue for another woman.

In this story we learn characteristics about the narrator as well as other characters. One of the things we learn about the narrator is that she lived down the block from Miss Blue. The narrator also tells us that she used to fall asleep listening to Miss Blue singing her blues at night. We learn that she sits on Miss Blue’s front porch to watch soap operas. In this story we meet Miss Blue an elderly woman who used to sing blues for a living. She lived by herself because her son died and her daughter disappeared. Miss Blue used to sit on her porch watching soap operas all day. We also learn that after heartbreak, she was able to create a blues song that became her only hit. In Miss Blue’s story the antagonist is Bo Willie, the man she was supposed to marry. We learn that Bo Willie was a married man when he was trying to win over Miss Blue. He worked as a porter at the railroad, which caused him and Miss Blue to be apart. In the end, we learn that the woman he had left Miss Blue for ended up leaving him with all his money. Another character we meet is the character in the soap opera, which triggers Miss Blue to tell her story.

One growing up theme in the story that the narrator is facing is contemplating mating, courtship, and marriage. Although the narrator is not contemplating doing these things she does learn about them nonetheless. She learns that you can’t have love and pain without each other. She also learns that although one may cry and hurt over love, it is something we have to get over. She learns that there is going to be pain in love but at the end, things will always look up. This growing up themes doesn’t really create conflict for the narrator as much as it did to Miss Blue. I believe the narrator can potentially use this story later in her life when she does contemplate mating.

One of the lessons the narrator learned was that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. The narrator learned this through Miss Blue’s story as she sees that Miss Blue writes a song about it and was a hit. She learns that she has to be an independent woman and not let heartbreak bring her down as much as she may cry about it. I also think she learned about memories and how they are important to keep things that were once important in our minds even if there are bad things to remember as well.

“The Blues Ain’t Nothing But A Good Woman Feelin Bad” by Shay Youngblood is a short story about heartache. With her story, Miss Blue taught the narrator about relationships and heartbreak. This information is something she can learn from and use later in her life.