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.