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.