According to the Random House online dictionary, "bildungsroman" is defined as “a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.” Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John both fit into the genre of Bildungsroman as they tell a tale of a young girl living in the Caribbean, approaching issues such as self-identity and colonialism, among topics that also discuss matters of color, class, education system and mother-daughter relationship. Critics such as Ketu H. Kartrak and Keith E. Byerman in “This Englishness Will Kill You” and “Anger in a Small Place” present deeper interpretations of the novels in matters of colonization of the mind and female identity. In Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack, Monkey, Tee struggles to find herself in a society that is complicated by color and classist issues. What is heartbreaking in her journey to maturity is that these conflicts lie in her own family, between her guardians Aunt Tantie and Aunt Beatrice, and not in the societal sense. Tee’s move from Aunt Tantie’s home to Aunt Beatrice’s house to attend St. Anne’s, results in a stream of criticism. During her stay with the loving Tantie, Tee is a confident, stubborn girl pulling pranks to stay out of Aunt Beatrice’s house. However, she sinks into a passive mode once with Beatrice, obeying her on all accounts. In living with Beatrice, Tee is constantly criticized by her ‘ordinaryness’ and ‘niggeryness.’ Being continually bombarded with Beatrice’s denunciations of Tantie as a “woman with no culture, no breeding, no sense of right and wrong herself” (Hodge 106), Tee gradually begins to resent the family and class she once grew up with, wishing Aunt Beatrice “[had gotten] us in the first place and [brought] us properly” (Hodge 107). Simultaneously, she also feels shame for her father’s darkness that has disrupted the bloodline for better features of the “White Ancestress” (Hodge 90). I began to have the impression that I should be thoroughly ashamed; for it seemed to me that my person must represent the rock-bottom of the family’s fall from grace. Sometimes when I was alone in the living-room Elizabeth Carter’s indistinguishable portrait grew features, a pair of eyes that frowned angrily and a mouth that was pursed together with disapproval. (Hodge 91) Suffocated by Aunt Beatrice’s prejudice and alienation, Tee obtains no self-esteem and positivity of herself. “I wanted to shrink, to disappear” (Hodge 107) she expresses. “I felt that the very sight of me was an affront to common decency. I wished that my body could shrivel up and fall away, that I could step out new and acceptable” (Hodge 107). This intense resentment for herself showcases the psychological abuse the issue of colorism and classism has on a young girl growing up in Trinidad. With nowhere to place or emit these cutting emotions, towards the end of the novel, Tee is on the verge of becoming a classist and racist herself and it begins with the rejection of her own family and friends. She is deeply embarrassed and ashamed during Tantie’s visit to Beatrice’s house as she sits before them “for the whole time, with my head hung” (Hodge 118). Even when she gains respect from her community at the abrupt news of departure to England, Tee can only feel estranged from everyone and herself. “Everything was changing, unrecognizable, pushing me out. This was as it should be, since I had moved up and no longer had any place here” (Hodge 122). Overall, there is no resolution to Tee’s self. She doesn’t achieve a strong sense of identity but is only left with feelings of inferiority. Another issue Hodge addresses is colonization. In Tee’s case, colonization plays a critical role