53 pages • 1-hour read
Matriarch: A Memoir
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Part 1, Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of discrimination, racial violence, illness, death, and sexual abuse.
Part 1: “Act One: A Daughter”
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Veltones: January 1968”
Knowles recalls when she and her friends formed the Veltones, a singing group. She, Harrette, Gail, and Vernell were all talented, but they also cared about their costumes. Agnes helped them with their styling. The longer Knowles sang with the group, the more passionate she became about singing.
Then one year her brother Larry’s girlfriend Lydia started taking her to movies and shows. One time, they attended a performance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The show made Knowles realize how much she loved art. She holds that the show changed her life and identifies Lydia as her first mentor.
Not long later, Agnes taught Knowles to sew. While Knowles wanted to sing, Agnes believed the only way to avoid being poor was to become a seamstress. Around this time, Skip’s girlfriend got pregnant. Skip could have been a star athlete, but ended up staying in Galveston with his new family. Witnessing Skip’s experience made Knowles realize she wanted to leave Galveston.
Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary: “An Education in Liberation: September 1968”
Knowles recalls starting high school at Ball High in 1968. It wasn’t an easy transition, but Knowles and her Black classmates fought for a Black studies program and a Black student union.
In 9th grade, Knowles got sick and Lumis took her to the hospital where Flo worked. The doctor who saw Knowles was convinced she was pregnant although Knowles told him she’d never had sex before. He then performed an invasive vaginal exam without Knowles’s or Lumis’s consent. Knowles told Flo and her parents; Flo was furious, but Agnes insisted she say nothing as she could risk losing her job.
A wall formed between Knowles and Agnes thereafter, as she felt Agnes had failed to protect her. In the months following, she became increasingly determined to leave Galveston. She avoided relationships with boys because she didn’t want to end up pregnant and stuck in town.
Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary: “Before I Let Go: January 1971”
Knowles recalls the Friday nights she spent at a music hall called the Session with Selena and Johnny. She and Johnny loved to dance. However, Knowles was worried that Johnny still hadn’t had his first boyfriend. Through a classmate (who was also gay), Knowles discovered the Kon Tiki, a gay bar. Knowles remembers how happy Johnny was whenever they went there together. In the months following, Knowles also encouraged Johnny to start sewing for the local drag queens. He began his own costume business.
One night, Knowles was at the movies with friends when a cop pulled up alongside her and demanded she give him her name. She refused and he arrested her. Knowles stood up for herself the whole time and was finally released. After graduation, Knowles impulsively drove to California with her nephew Ronnie. In San Diego, she moved in with her niece, Selena’s daughter, Linda.
Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary: “Golden Hour: August 1972”
Knowles recounts her time in San Diego. She immediately fell in love with the place and she and Linda made a life together. Meanwhile, Knowles started hearing stories from new friends about their bad relationships with their mothers. Feeling guilty, Knowles called Agnes. She apologized for leaving so abruptly and thanked her for being such a good mother. However, she also told Agnes that she needed to trust her more.
Knowles and Linda moved to LA. Knowles started doing hair, makeup, and styling work. Then Linda moved back to Texas and Knowles moved in with a friend, Paula.
Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary: “Return of the Prodigal Daughter: June 1974”
Knowles recalls her decision to return to Galveston. Both her parents got sick and needed her. She struggled to readjust to life in Texas, but was glad to reconnect with Johnny and her other nieces and nephews.
One day, she and Ronnie raced motorcycles and she was arrested. Afterwards, Agnes called a lawyer named Ballinger Mills Jr., who demanded the police harassment against their family stop. Knowles reflects on this situation, asserting that if they hadn’t had this connection, they would have continued to face violence.
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary: “Into the Undercurrent: August 1975”
Knowles recalls the time she and her crush Rusty visited Galveston Beach. It was the only stretch of beach where Black citizens were allowed, and was known for its dangerous undercurrents. Knowles and Rusty went into the water and got separated. Knowles was dragged so far out, she was convinced that she’d die. Finally she was rescued by a helicopter. On land, she discovered that Rusty was badly injured, but had survived. The experience bonded them. They dated only briefly but remained good friends. Not long later, Rusty introduced her to his friend Mathew Knowles.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary: “The Persistence of Fate: January 1978”
Knowles recounts the night she and Mathew met at a party. Knowles wasn’t sure about Mathew, but Mathew was persistent. They began seeing each other shortly thereafter. Mathew cared about Knowles, but seemed invested in her family, too. He also had a lot of good ideas and he and Knowles made a good team. However, Knowles soon learned that Mathew was in serious debt. She insisted he pay off his debt if he wanted them to be together. They soon got engaged. Mathew kept his promise and saved some money.
Just before their wedding, Lumis got sick. Agnes insisted that Skip, Knowles’s eldest brother, walk her down the aisle instead. Knowles wasn’t close with Skip, but retrospectively knows his participation in her wedding meant a lot to Agnes.
Immediately after the wedding, Mathew’s godfather died. Knowles stayed in Galveston to help her parents while he went to the funeral. They were apart for a long time after they married. Agnes’s health rapidly declined during this era. Knowles, Selena, and Mathew found a priest who would give her last rites before her death. Then Knowles and her siblings gathered around Agnes’s bed. After she died, Knowles was surprised by how calm she felt. Not long later, Knowles discovered she was pregnant.
Part 1, Chapters 8-14 Analysis
Knowles’s detailed depictions of her adolescence and early adult life capture The Complexities of Motherhood and Family Dynamics. From a young age, Knowles had close relationships with her parents, siblings, nieces, and nephews. However, the older she got, the more confined she felt in the context of her familial relationships. In particular, Knowles’s desperation to be her own person and live her own life conflicted with her mother’s ideas about who she should be. While Agnes wanted to control Knowles to protect her, Knowles wanted to be trusted and respected as her own person with her own ideas. Her focus on her maternal relationship in these chapters captures the simultaneous importance and complexity of mother-daughter bonds, particularly in the context of self-discovery.
Knowles’s reflections on her relationship with Agnes foreshadow Knowles’s personal approach to motherhood. In the Prelude, Knowles asserts that, “We all have this power to be matriarchs, to be women of the sacred practice of nurturing, guiding, protecting—foreseeing and remembering” (xxii). In Chapters 8-14, she explores this notion via the lens of her and Agnes’s relationship. Knowles is careful to include both the negative and positive aspects of her and Agnes’s dynamic to offer a realistic representation of the mother-daughter relationship. She is also capturing the evolution of her regard for her mother over time.
For example, the memories surrounding Knowles’s hospital visit and her conversation with Agnes after moving to California capture the scope of her and Agnes’s connection. In the context of the former incident, Knowles began to pull away from Agnes after she suffered sexual abuse at the hospital and Agnes did nothing to stand up for her. This experience “was worse to [Knowles] than [Agnes] not standing up to the nuns at Holy Rosary. [Knowles] saw her as weak, unable and unwilling to protect [her]” (89). Knowles thus wanted Agnes to fulfill the nurturing and protecting aspects of maternity, which she seemed incapable of doing.
Later on, however, Knowles’s experiences in San Diego made her realize how good Agnes had in fact been to her. When she called Agnes to apologize, she not only thanked her for all she’d done for her, but confronted her about being too controlling and failing to protect her. This captures Knowles’s personal growth at this juncture, as she actively worked to make sense of and heal her dynamic with Agnes. These sequences suggest that while all mother-daughter connections are complicated, Knowles’s bond with Agnes was vital to her understanding of herself as an adult. The section ends with Knowles discovering that she is pregnant—a revelation that implies that Agnes’s passing will impact how Knowles views herself as a mother.
Knowles’s early adult experiences also fuel the memoir’s explorations of The Pursuit of Personal Identity Over Time. When Knowles was still a teenager, she began to experience new things that changed her perspective on her family, her hometown, herself, and her future. Such experiences included watching Skip give up his athletic career when his girlfriend got pregnant, which helped her realize she wanted to be independent and experience life somewhere else before settling down, and attending the dance theater’s show with Lydia, which inspired her passion for both singing and styling—two interests that would later reappear during her involvement with Destiny’s Child.
In particular, Knowles’s eagerness to leave Galveston captures how leaving one’s hometown is a vital way to gain perspective on what one wants. Moving to California, working her first jobs, meeting new people, and experiencing art and culture in new ways were all forms of self-discovery for Knowles. Although she returned to Galveston to care for her parents, she learned to exercise her agency and claim her autonomy by experiencing the world outside the context of her family.
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