Chapters Nine and Ten

Chapter nine finds the author enjoying a game of pick-up baseball in the lot behind the projects when, at the end of the game, a boy who had borrowed his glove suddenly decides he’s keeping it. The boy, named James, is Black and is much taller than Conley and it occurs to him his chances of winning a fight against James are not so good given his adversary is so much larger “In this case, however, my choice became clear: I could avoid a fight but forfeit my glove, or I could attack James and hope to win. I had no idea what chance I stood in such a confrontation” (Conley, 2000, p. 106). As the fight gets going another boy, Sean, pulls a switchblade on Conley and asks the group of kids watching if he “Should slice the honky”? The bully, Sean, decides to further humiliate Conley by making him dance like a puppet for everyone while the blade continues to push against his throat. The incident came to an end when Sean heard police sirens several blocks over “Though never any real threat, the squad car had given Sean his out, a socially acceptable reason to let me go, an excuse for having drawn his weapon but not having drawn blood” (Conley, 2000, p.109).

At the end of this chapter he reflects that it’s a right of the middle class to be able to fabricate the reasons for the events in our lives as opposed to allowing the social order to do so for us. For example, if a person living in poverty gets robbed, one assumption might be the robbery is a result of where the person is living. Conversely, if a middle-class person is robbed it’s because the robber took days to stalk them, learned their schedules and then without warning swooped down and stole prize possessions “This is the privilege of the middle and upper classes in America—the right to make up the reasons things turn out the way they do, to construct our own narratives rather than having the media and society do it for us” (Conley, 2000, p.110).

Chapter Ten

Each summer the author and his family traveled to Pennsylvania, where Conley’s mom (Ellen) was from, to visit with family and have a vacation. Conley states this vacation, while interrupting his Little League career, allows him to be himself and not feel torn between the world at school and the world where he lives.

He and his sister have a variety of adventures that range from playing with the neighborhood kids to attending summer school and Boy Scout Camp. Both Conley and his sister get the feeling this is the “real” America where white families grow up, go to school and live, as opposed to his life in New York City. While he’s in Pennsylvania, he tries to assimilate into the local culture and finds it confusing and difficult, as does his sister. For example, when Alexandra attends a birthday party/sleepover, the girls start to tell spooky stories before bed. One such story in particular tells of a monster-like “nigger” that tries to eat a little girl after chewing on a squirrel. Alexandra is shocked at the overt racism but is also confused because that same term is used by Blacks themselves to refer to each other at home “At any rate, the word never seemed dirty until we heard it used in the white Pennsylvania suburbs. Here, racism was expressed but apparently not thought much about; by contrast, I often reflected, on Avenue D it was often thought about but never spoken of—at least not directly to us” (Conley, 2000, p.117).

During their stay in Pennsylvania, Conley and his sister Alexandra had attended BBQ’s, church services, sleepovers, summer school and Conley himself had spent time with the Boy Scouts. The author, in particular, felt angry with his parents for not exposing him to religion, and when he pressed his dad as to why, his father admitted harboring resentment for organized religion. Here both children were surrounded by people that looked like them, but did not act, or speak, or think like them. Even though the children felt “comfortable” being surrounded by white people, their isolation weighed on them because their upbringing and daily lives were nothing like Ellen’s relatives in Pennsylvania.