Chapter fifteen finds the author shocked over his best friend, Jerome, being shot in the neck while walking down Avenue D. In some ways the author is thrilled that Jerome’s family called him first to give him the grim details so he can pass the story on to others becoming popular with every group of kids at school. In other ways, the author feels loss and guilt for being the best friend of a kid who was shot “…this time I had a tale to tell, something no other kid—no matter how cool, how rich, how popular—could match. At the same time I felt horribly guilt about this pleasure” (Conley, 2000, p. 162).
Conley visits Jerome in the hospital and finds he is the only white person in the room. Jerome’s mother, grief stricken, continues to repeat over and over “my baby’s paralyzed” and Conley asks out loud “Is it from the neck down or the waist down?” which horrifies everyone in the room and only causes the crevasse between the author’s world and his friends in the projects to open more deeply. Because of this question, he no longer belongs with the people he lives with and is once again, rejected by the group he most wants to belong to.
Conley develops a type of obsessive behavior in order to protect his loved ones and his home whereby he kisses everyone two times on each cheek before leaving them. This behavior progresses to where he’s kissing the furniture, the carpets and even clothing in order to protect his family and home “I must have been trying to recover a sense of psychic control over my body while Jerome was going through real physical therapy” (Conley, 2000, p. 171). His mom sends him to therapy, which does not help, and he eventually learns to control his need to protect others by focusing on an object his mom gives him.
Chapter sixteen
In this chapter Conley makes friends with a Hispanic boy that is large in stature but soft in voice. His name is Raphael and unlike most of the Hispanic kids Conley knows, his family had made solid financial choices and lived in a loft apart just north of school.
While playing at Raphael’s house, the boys played a game with matches and accidentally set Raphael’s room on fire. The firefighters came and put out the fire but more is damaged by the smoke and water than by the fire itself. Conley’s mom was more relieved he was okay and also that Raphael’s parents were not going to press them for money to fix the damaged rooms. Conley believes the reason his parents were not asked for money was because the family was white and enjoyed the option of working out the damages matter privately without the intervention of the law “The fire taught me one of the most subtle but powerful privileges of middle-class status: the chance to work problems out informally, without the interference of the authorities. Poor minorities get no such allowances. But we were lucky—for Raphael’s family represented the right class and I the right race” (Conley, 2000, p. 181).
Chapter seventeen-final chapter
The final chapter in the book has the family moving to a loft apartment in a better part of town. Conley and his dad protest vehemently but ultimately Conley’s mom, Ellen wins out and the family moves. Conley has difficulties making friends in this new area of town and when he encounters kids he knows from his previous school, he’s labeled “socially awkward” and retreats back inside. The residents at his new building were mostly, if not all, white and he was unable to integrate into his new environment. Towards the end of the chapter Jerome comes for a visit in a motorized wheelchair that he controls with hand motions. He and Conley chat about Jerome’s desire to move to Los Angeles and become a movie star, while Jerome asks about Conley’s new home. The final paragraph has Jerome asking why Conley moved away from the projects and before anyone could answer, Conley’s mom says “we moved here because of you” and everyone goes silent. In essence, it took Jerome getting shot to jolt Ellen into the reality that where they live is unsafe and next time, it could be her son getting hurt and not his best friend.
This book is based on the author’s real life experiences growing up in the projects in Manhattan. It is Dalton Conley’s reflections on how his formative years were spent trying to conform to a group he never really fit into and longing to find a safe place to be himself. The author graduates from high school and attends college at the University of California at Berkley. Here he attempts to integrate to mostly white campus life and finds he can blend in without being harassed. He now lives a couple miles from where he grew up in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. He works at Yale University and commutes two-hours each way.
As I reflect on this book I keep wondering about the twists and turns of Conley’s life and how, in the end, he would up living and working in mostly white areas. He desperately wanted to belong to the people in the projects growing up, but because of his skin color he never really quite fit in. When he started high school, his family moved to a mostly white neighborhood but because of where he came from he didn’t fit in there either. So this is a child continuously searching for a place to be himself and eventually finding it at college.
This book, while interesting, made me angry from time to time because the author’s parents couldn’t see beyond their own selfish needs and put their children first. In my view because both his parents were artists, they felt the need to experience life at the poverty level. His father never worked full time, and based on the book, his mom never worked at all except to write a book. I understand Conley became the person he is today because of the adversity he experienced, but I’m wondering if his formative years might have been better spent in a safer environment.
My connection with this book to adult learning is that I should never assume where someone comes from based on what they look like. I need to be culturally aware how I present curricula and also be sensitive to how my learners process information.
It's understandable how you might develop an OCD type behavior when feeling like you have no control over many situations.
ReplyDeleteWow, chapter fifteen sounds scary! What an example of the psychological trauma that Conley experienced when his friend was shot. I always think how we can never underestimate the interesting and sometimes bizarre ways that our minds adapt and respond. Anytime I say or think that "I would NEVER do that!" I stop and wonder if I can really be so sure that I would never do something, like feel a need to kiss furniture to keep my family safe.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that, despite the hard times, Conley didn't want to move out of the area when his Mom did. Home is a powerful place. I'm always reminded of that when I see so many students from really bad neighborhoods who are terrified of getting out of prison because they will be going back to their neighborhood where it's hard for them to stay out of trouble. And I always wonder (and sometimes ask out loud to the students) why they don't go somewhere else, even just a different part of the same city. The same jobs exists there and in their old neighborhood. But, they go back to the same place because it's home. I can understand that.
And, how about that, Conley ends up living near his old neighborhood even though he has to commute two hours each way to work. That must have been quite a move going to college in California though! Somehow it seems nice that he didn't leave his old neighborhood behind though and came back. At least now he can stay connected to the issues that his childhood neighborhood is facing.
I can understand how you'd feel like his parents were selfish. It sounds like they could have raised their children in other, safer places but chose not too. I agree, it's an odd choice.