Choices
I am reading Frankie Lennon’s novel “The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life”. My response is on the chapter titled ‘Plaits’. The setting of this story starts out on a Saturday morning in their house. This story is about plaits or also known as braids. The protagonist of this story is six-year old Frankie, the narrator, and the antagonist is her plaits. Another character that plays a major role in this story is Frankie’s mother. She is the one that actually makes the plaits in her hair.
The main conflict that I see arising in this story is the one between Frankie and her plaits. She does not like her hair; she wishes she had Shirley Temple curls that bounced in the wind. She was told that if you had Shirley Temple curls you were beautiful. In this story she explains how she does not like people teasing her, about anything really. When her mother was finished braiding her hair she went out to the square to play with her friends. She was nervous that when she went out to play that all her friends would notice her hair and start laughing at her but it went unnoticed for a while. Until her friend Shirley’s cousin, James, had the guts to come over to Frankie and call her ‘Buckwheat’. Frankie explains in the story that when someone calls a black person ‘buckwheat’ it was the worst kind of name they could be called. At the end of the story she ends up cutting off all her plaits with scissors and not ever knowing what it felt like to have Shirley Temple curls that bounce in the wind.
At the end of the story the narrator, Frankie, cuts off her own hair. By doing this I see it as a way of trying to become independent. Also, her standing her ground when her parents find out the next morning shows that she sticks to her decisions, even if others do not agree with them. In this story I personally do not see any examples of African American motifs. One message that I got out of this story was to not have something hold you back from your full potential, like your hair. Yes, people may make fun of you for numerous reasons but it is your life, you are in charge.
This story taught me to be strong in the choices that I make. Everyone makes good and bad choices; it is what you do with the outcome of that choice that makes you different. On a certain level, I did connect to the story. I have had to make a decision, like cutting my hair, as well when I was younger. I had hair flowing down past my bottom and I loved it. Everyone was amazed when I came to school with a new hair-doo; my classmates were amazed with what I could do with my hair. One year, my mom brought up Locks of Love, a hair donation organization. She suggested to me that I should cut my hair and donate it to Locks of Love. I was not so sure about this because I loved my hair; it kind of made me who I was. It made me stand out from my classmates and my friends at school. After thinking about it for a while I decided to go ahead and cut my hair to donate it. Yes, I will miss it but it is just hair, it can grow back. Ever since then, my hair has not grown back to that length and has only grown past my mid back.
I think everyone has those moments where a choice can be life changing or just a simple change in your daily routine. We all have things we regret and things we wish we could share with everyone. There are many little choices in our live that we have to make. We just have to decide whether or not once we make those choices if we want to stick with them. This story can have many different messages to many different people. You might even get the same message that I did. We all are different; it just depends on how you take that difference and make it your own.
