It was one of those sultry afternoons in school and my English teacher nonchalantly went on about a poem. I do not have the faintest memory of the poem that was being taught or my teacher who was teaching it. I do not even remember who the poet was or anything else about the day except that I was introduced to Topsy. The poet mentioned in his poem that ‘the grasses grew like Topsy’ and I learned that Topsy was an orphaned slave girl who thought she just grow’d and nobody ever made her. And hence the phrase – “grow like Topsy”. I was probably a year or two older than her then and she intrigued me. In my quest to learn more about her, I found myself in the company of the Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Collins Classics)
