Betsey Brown

Betsey Brown
It was absolutely refreshing to read a book that I did not need to skip over sentences or paragraphs to avoid language I have long sense out grown. After reading The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager and Hairstyles of the Damned I did not have a desire to read another novel about adolescence. Ntozake Shange took me by surprise with Betsey Brown. The novel contains some profanity, sexual content, and very little violence, but it displayed tastefully. I think we can all agree that these themes take place in our lives, but my concern is with the way it is conveyed.
Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn painted a negative unsavory picture of black people that did not portray the reality of what it is like to grow up black at any age. Shange, however, writes about a middle class black family who struggle through the difficulties of integration, growing pains, and racism tastefully. It is great to read about blacks who are not uneducated, slaves, or poor. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that this is one family who seem to have made it while certain other black characters were not as successful. Still I remain intrigued because I could not help but think that the bottom would fall out of their prosperity. I am impressed that nobody went to jail or was beat to death.
Integration brought a great turmoil in the Brown family home as it did in most black homes. The tension and stress of children going off to school in a white racist environment is frightening, “All right. They can go, but the first sign of trouble of any kind, they go to the Catholic school….” Jane explains (p 91). I can remember when school busing began for my sons. We did not really have a choice because I could not afford to send my sons to private schools. The Brown family’s decision to allow their children to be pioneers for integration in the school system is admirable. Never the less Betsey was like most youths who could not understand why no one ever asks what they want to do. I am quite sure my sons had similar thoughts.
I found a sense of joy in reading this book. The functional family life the Browns have is typical of middle class blacks who adapt to success in a white world. It seems that Jane acknowledges the family is black, but they don’t have to act like it. Betsey’s running away shows that all teens go through a period of confusion, doubt, and rebellion before they find their way, no matter what walk of life they come from. Betsey focus is on who she is while her mother concentrate on what she wants for her family. I can remember my mother becoming upset because I announced I wanted to be a Black Nationalist. “I ‘m black and I’m proud” is what I chanted only I really did not agree with most of the things they stood for.

Teen Violence

Violence among teens
Shirley woke up early that Monday morning. She knew what had happened on Saturday and felt very apprehensive about the threat Gail had made. How could she get out of going to school? What would the other kids think of her if she did not show up? Would Gail follow through on her treat? In the most of all her pondering her mother was preparing breakfast and the smell nauseated Shirley. As she marched down stairs her thoughts were more on running away than eating food.
As fictional as this may seem the scenario is more real than fake. Every day some teens go off to school with fear in their hearts. The National Center for Victims of Crime reports that “5.4 percent of high school students report staying home at least one day a month because they fear for their safety.” In the novel Hairstyles of the Damned Gretchen is a bully who beats up every girl who she catches with the guy she loves. Violence among teens is a common theme through out most of the books in Adolescence Literature. The questions I have are who are the perpetrators? What effect does violence have on teens as a whole? To what extent does teen violence go?
Outline
I. Perpetrators of Violence
a. Personality Trait
b. Family Background
c. Causes of Teen Violence

II. Effects of Teen Violence
a. Fear of the Victims
b. Frustrations of the Community
c. Disruption of Learning Ability

III. Extent of Teen Violence
a. Verbal to Physical
b. Gang Related Activity
c. School Riots
d. School Shootings

Teen violence is as American as Apple pie. One group of people have always felt the need to victimize another. Teens seem to have more energy to exercise the physical and verbal actions necessary to bully someone or a group. It may be due to their fear they have of the future or their feeling of inferiority of the oppressed persons. What ever the reason it is common among teens.

Huck

It never ceases to amaze me how people go to great lengths to cover up or hide the ills of society. The racism that existed during the time of Huck is as real as the book portrays it. It may sound ignorant to those who are born after 1970 and are not of the black race, but for me it is nothing new.
I can understand how Toni Morrison and other black people would take offense to the term “nigger” that is used so frequently in the book. I can even see why some would feel it an even greater insult the incorporate humor into such a disgraceful treatment of another human being. What I don’t understand is what is worse the mentioning of the act or the act itself?
In the book Jim is depicted as a funny talking, funny looking, raggedy clothes wearing, uneducated human being. Where some of his character is far fetched most is not. I found myself asking the question “am I to see this book as fiction or non-fiction.” As a fiction character I would laugh at all of the people in the book because they all at some point resemble Jim in all ways. On page 147 the caption “Courting on the Sly “is of a white male and female whom can fit the profile of Jim. The explanation is, “some of the young men was bare footed, and some and some of the children didn’t have on any clothes but just a tow-linen shirt.” Or the caption “I am the Late Dauphin!” on page 141 that paints the white men as funny and ragged looking make them look as poor and ignorant as Jim.
For Huck to not see Jim as a human being, equal to him, is something that has transcended time. It was only a few years ago that I ran into a group of white people who had not been exposed to black people on a personal level. They were as in the dark about the culture as the Huck is about Jim.
Like it or not the book is a true depiction of what blacks endured as a result of racism. What I do find to be fiction is the adventures the two of them encountered and always managed to escape. I also see that even though Jim is intended to be an underprivileged “nigger” he is portrayed as being a voice of wisdom for Huck.