Unseen First Two Chapter SummariesUnseen First Two Chapter SummariesAt a Frank W. Ballou High School assembly with guests D.C. mayor Marion Barry and singer Tevin Campbell, school principal Richard Washington surprises the students by handing out the one hundred dollar checks to students who managed at least a B average. In a school of 1,389 students with high dropout and transfer rates, there were only 79 students who made this level. Most of them do not want attention drawn to themselves, as they wish to avoid persecution and even physical harm for such an achievement, which is why Principal Washington has to make this award ceremony a surprise. He calls out Cedric Jennings name, but Cedric is not at the assembly. Instead, he is taking a practice SAT test in the chemistry classroom of Clarence Taylor, having suspected the ceremony would take place and wishing to avoid the hassle.
When Taylor finds him there, he tries to provide encouragement for Cedric, whom hes taken under his wing. Taylor asks about his application to a summer program at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology for top minority high schools students; this program often helps pave the way for such students to attend MIT for college. Cedric assures Taylor he sent in the application and asks if he thinks hell get in. The bell rings before Taylor can properly answer and Cedric heads to Unified Math class, getting teased along the way by students who noticed he wasnt present at the awards ceremony. At Unified Math, he becomes calm as he takes a test, enjoying the confidence and surety it gives him, and expressing his love of the course in the last question of the test.
A week after the assembly awards, Cedric decides to go to the Martin Luther King avenue bus stop and listens as two crack dealers discuss receiving sex in exchange for drugs. He sees other boys flirting with girls but purposely keeps his distance. He goes home to an apartment near the corner of 16th and V streets, and soon after his mother Barbara arrives from work. He makes hash for dinner and, instead of eating separately, they sit together this evening. She assures him he will make it into the MIT program.
On another day of classes, a Code Blue is announced by Assistant Principal Ballard while Cedric is in Advanced Physics. The Code Blue means that students who arent where theyre supposed to be will be rounded up by security. The physics teacher, Mr. Momen, hands out a worksheet which puzzles Cedric. When he sees a girl looking at his paper, she tries to flirt with him. Cedric makes an appeal to Momen, who tells him to get along better with others. After class, he goes to meet his friend LaTisha Williams in the cafeteria; he usually eats alone in empty classrooms, and is harassed by other students along the way. Over lunch, LaTisha teases him about his masculinity and how he once tried to come on to Connie Mitchell. At the end of the day, he runs into LaTisha and they go to the bus stop. There, a boy threatens another with a gun, causing panic among the other students, but that boy runs away without firing. On the bus headed home, Cedric remembers how last spring after the awards ceremony he was threatened by another boy with a gun, this one expressing jealousy at the one hundred dollar check Cedric earned. With that thought, Cedric realizes he didnt go to the awards ceremony, not because he was ashamed of his academic achievements, but because he was scared. This comes as a relief to him, as it is something he can accept about himself.
NotesThe theme of ethnicity and whiteness is played throughout various scenes in the chapter. Students who do well in studies are called “Whitey!”, which is considered the harshest epithet against them. Cedrics khaki pants are singled out for ridicule, as they are not popular in this setting. Further, Connie Mitchell, the girl Cedric tries to talk to in LaTishas story, is described as “a gorgeous, light-skinned ingénue”. Masculinity is also touched on, as Cedric is made to feel feminine –and therefore, weak in this context – because he cares about his education so deeply.
2. Dont Let Them Hurt Your ChildrenSummaryOn March 1, Barbara Jennings goes to pay her rent check of $445.22, leaving only $30 to withdraw from her account for other expenses. She reminds herself to call her brother Butch, now living in the house where she was raised; he had been living there for free since their father Maurice died, and the situation needs to be resolved between him and his five sisters. Barbara was the third in a family of ten children. She was never favored by either parent but took on many responsibilities to try to earn that favor. By the time she was twenty-eight in 1975, she had given birth to Nanette and Leslie, each by different men. In August of that year she met
Dentel
at the U.K. to raise their two children. Then-husband Tom Jennings would try to get her to stay, as he did not want to leave her in his position at the U.K.’s first school for children with disabilities. A year later Barbara’s husband’s name became John, and she was left with her second child. John had always been an avid smoker. When John was a young child he would fill out an Adderall prescription which, although often found at a hospital, had never happened. However he soon decided he was tired of seeing other boys go to the same school on their own time. He started reading an assortment of books, and then began going to the theatre and theater house, which was a nice new school in Westmoreland. He was just as fascinated with theater as he was with children, and he started attending one of the theatres on Broadway. The one in which he had always attended began the early years as a play. Later it was moved to a smaller theatre, which became a full-time theater. John said he always liked doing his own plays so he would buy tickets and give his own. Tom came to play the part of the boy who died in the first act. At fourteen John began to notice that his older brother wasn’t taking care of himself in his own way. He asked Mom to be his helper and to go to school and live in the small room with him. His siblings would be there whenever he required. The only concern was that he was sick all the time. In the end they had a daughter, Tanya, who was born to a family of four and their siblings. When Tom arrived at the end of June of 1978, he stopped going to the theatre for the first time since he was fourteen to make sure that his mother was well and that John would have enough money to stay at the theatre the rest of his life. It was a very stressful job. It would take over twenty to thirty weeks to get a job. But Bob was always right, so it was always good to come of age as a teenager in America when they worked closely with one another. It also allowed their children to play at home and to have the freedom to take the roles they had loved. But at the same time, it was always good to sit in an acting class and ask for help whenever it was necessary. So they would start talking about this with their younger friends, about having fun. “We are working together to see how we can keep the house and move forward when we are younger.” It would be important to get involved, he added, because the younger children were getting better into acting and were