Tribes

In the book The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life by Frankie Lennon we read about the author’s life experiences and memoirs. In this book we come across a short story called “Tribes.” This story deals with the author’s transition to the big city of Los Angeles. We read about her learning the ropes and behaviors of the people in L.A.

This story takes places in the year 1987 in the city of L.A. We find the protagonist / main character, Frankie Lennon in what the she calls a Black Gay Bar. The antagonist that the author has to deal with is that of a internal force, which is between herself. It is the force of accepting yourself the way one is. She is not used to seeing girl with girl or guy with guy couples kissing, hugging, and dancing together. She is appalled at the idea of people being able to come out and just do as they please not caring what others think. This force she fights is that of adjusting to the different ways and behaviors of the people in L.A. In the story there was a man, Reverend Carl Bean who happened to come out of the closet and announce that he was gay and Frankie was just shocked. She was barely getting used to the ways and behaviors of others. Like the author states, “she was still new on the block so she wasn’t quite sure how to take things or respond to what was going on.” Things were so different back in Evansville than in L.A. that it was a whole different world for Frankie. And like she tells us, she was still learning her ABCs.

Near the end of the narrative on pg. 173 in the second paragraph, the author writes that she thought about Stacey, together in secret, adrift, without a tribe to give them aid and comfort. They had no one to go to for advice and no way to learn how to be who they were without shame. Frankie is actually saying that if maybe she wasn’t deprived or denied of what straight people took advantage of then maybe she would still be with Stacey. I think the purpose for why the author wrote this narrative is to let us know maybe deep inside of her she wished that she could’ve had the same freedom of expression back in her home town in Evansville and be free to be with the love for her life Stacey and not only that but the ability to be who she is without be scared.

What made this story very interesting to me was the character of Henry, the bartender. I liked that Henry got along well with Frankie. What I found interesting about Henry was that he didn’t hide who he was, and like the author describes him, “glorious personae as a queen.” I really enjoyed his sense of humor, for example when Frankie heard there was a church where gay people could attend, she wanted to know more details about this place so Henry say, “I don’t know. Let me check with the girls down there.” He was referring to the three black guys sitting down across the corner from Frankie, which I thought was funny because these men were talking about the gay preacher, sounding like women gossiping.

I personally enjoyed reading this story. I thought it was a well written piece full of description and vividness. It had humor and drama. I would definitely recommend it to everyone who doesn’t mind reading about this issue of being gay.

The Journey of Life

In Frankie Lennon’s memoir, The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life we read about the author’s life journey (quest). This life questbrings one to difficult tests which are part of life in order to learn and grow from them. This journey can be broken down into stages. In the introduction of the book which is a memory we can see this first stage of the Home and in in another story we can see the author getting into one of the last stages, Final Ordeal.

In the first story “Memory:Mee Street and beyond” the author talks about her memories of when she was a child growing up. Clearly the Home stage can be exemplified in this particular story. The Home- the known, familiar, safe haven of the everyday world of the Journeyer before the “story” begins. In reading this story I realized that the author Frankie was in the known. She writes about how things used to be and what we remember from childhood we remember forever. For example the author writes that summers are a memory: The delight of getting to go barefoot everyday and wiggle my toes in warm grass; racing Pudgy to the corner grocery store. These kinds of memories are happy ones that make the author feel at home just remembering those good times that she lived in her childhood.

In the story “Baptism” we can see this stage of the Final Ordeal. Final Ordeal – Central trial/ life/death crisis; The Journey teeters on the brink of failure. The Journeyer faces her/his biggest fear, confronts the most difficult challenge and experiences symbolic “death.” Only through the "dying" of her/his old self can the Journeyer be reborn. “Rebirth” or change/transformation grants The Journeyer greater insight, wisdom, and “power” to see the Journey to the end. I think that “Baptism” is the perfect example for this stage. In this story the author talks about how the sixties was a time when the order of the universe began to crumble. “This decade of crisis and drama would take them into water to be baptized: In fire and in ice. “ Frankie dies symbolically and is baptized into the real world where “innocence was no more.” She was confronted with the real world now and reborn into this world of chaos.

The narrator’s life journey leads to her struggles and challenges, her battles and hardships. This quest can have good and bad moments and Frankie was presented with both during her journey. These moments in life helped her shape the person she is today.

Cindy Ellie

"Cindy Ellie" by Mary Carter Smith is about a young girl named Ellie. At the beginning of the story we know that she had a father named Sam Johnson and a mother named Lula who had died. One day Ellie’s father remarries and this woman whom he marries brings her two daughters from South Carolina. They treated her as their servant and started calling her Cindy Ellie. Her father, Sam new how her wife and two stepdaughters were treating poor Ellie but never said a word. One day the whole family was invited to the mayor’s inauguration ball. Cindy Ellie wanted to go but she had to stay home and work but with the help of her godma she was able to go. The mayor’s son, Toussaint was instantly amazed by Cindy Ellie’s beauty. He searches for her everywhere until he finds her. Cindy Ellie forgave her stepsisters and even found them husbands. So Cindy Ellie marred Toussaint and they lived happily ever after.

I really enjoyed reading this story. I liked it because it is similar to the story of Cinderella only that this is of the African American culture. I liked the end of the narrative because like all fairytales it had a happy ending.

Two new vocabulary words that I learned were kenete and Ghana. Kente is a colorful fabric of Ghanaian origin: often worn as a symbol of African-American pride. Ghana is Kingdom of, a medieval W African empire extending from near the Atlantic coast almost to Timbuktu; flourished from about the 9th to 12th centuries.