Community Profile Anecdote - On the Run with Suzy

Mr. Lewenstein asked us to begin our Community Profile with an anecdote.  He said establishing  a personal connection would bring our writing to life.  Below I try to paint a true picture of my friend and teen mother Suzy.  ( It's kind of hard - she's always on the move! ) 

Before Suzy became pregnant, we were very close friends. In high school, we used to sit together in the back of the room in all of our classes.  Suzy always used to take the spot next to the window and draw pictures in her notebook.  She was a dreamer.  She was also a runner.  She was on the cross country team.  She spent a lot of her time in class drawing pictures of running shoes she liked in her notebook.  She was good with the Nike and Puma symbols.  They covered her pages.  Her teachers didn’t seem to mind.  They said she was very talented.  Suzy planned to continue running and drawing in college.  She was going to study art.

When she told me she was pregnant, we both cried.  We both knew she wouldn’t be able to go to college any time soon.  Suzy had to drop out for a while.  I was the one who sat by the window.   While I was able to go to college, Suzy worked to take care of her family.  She has different priorities now.   I miss her.   With our crazy schedules, we don’t see each other very often.  Lately, however, I’ve see she’s running again.  I see her in her Nikes pushing her stroller along the side of the road when I go to school.  She doesn’t look like your typical drop-out.  She looks determined and full of life. It’s just that she has a whole new set of goals.  I always HONK:  “You Go Girl! Nothing can stop you!”

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Meet My Community Profile: An Intro to Suzy - Teen Mother on the Run

Here we go.  My community profile focuses upon the phenomenon of Teen Pregnancy.  The subject of my research starts with Suzy - a teen mother I know from high school.  We used to sit next to each other in English class.  After school we ran cross country together.  Pregnancy hasn't slowed down Suzy at all.  She is still as hard as ever to keep up with.

Suzy is a dreamer, not a “dreamer” the way we use the word today, but she has always had the goal of being the first in her family to graduate from college.  She came to this country without knowing a word of Spanish, but she persevered.  Not only did she learn English, now she wants to teach it.  However, When she  became pregnant in her senior year of high school, all her plans had to be put on hold.  The father of the child wanted nothing to do with marriage.  When it came time to have the baby, Suzy found herself all alone.  Suzy’s mother was a full-time nurse.  Her father was so angry at his daughter, he refused to speak with her.  He certainly wouldn’t support her. 

Suzy had no other option but to take matters into her own hands.  Suzy decided to raise her child as a single mother.  Yes, she knew of the hardship and challenge of raising a baby by herself in today’s economy,  but this was Suzy being Suzy.  She still had her dream of becoming an English professor.  Nothing was going to get in her way.  A counselor on the COD campus told her that with her grades, she was eligible for a Pell grant.  With this subsidy, she would be able to raise her child and continue her education.  Although many single mothers may feel trapped in their lives, Suzy saw no obstacle in her way for moving on in her life. She is inspired by the idea of becoming a role model for her daughter.  Every day she wakes up, she wants to be strong for her.

Whatever people think about her decision to go at it as a single mother, she just doesn’t care.  “The look at me from the outside,” she told me, “but they don’t know me.” Suzy doesn’t feel trapped at all with her baby.  No matter what happens, she will always have  her love and dream and vision.  Her baby will be her guiding light.

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Sandra Cisneros: Not So "Only" Daughter

This was the first week of class.  Mr. Lewenstein shared one of his favorite authors.  Her name is Sandra Cisneros.  Mr. Lewenstein said she writes with an edge.  We all agree!  We worked in groups to respond to her essay "Only Daughter."  She writes about her life-long struggle to gain acceptance from her father.

Sandra’s childhood experience of being “the only daughter” proved to be a great training ground for a writing career. In fact, it was her feelings of isolation and abandonment from her fathers and brothers that pushed her towards reading and writing. When she grew older, her skill for transferring her plight to the page enabled her to enter UC Berkeley and later become on of our most renown Latino authors. Her “ House on Mango Street”, for example, reflects many of the same childhood frustrations she describes in her essay. One story after another boasts the voice of a poor young girl struggling to make sense of her loneliness. When she writes in “Only Daughter” that she values her mistreatment from being an only daughter, We believe her. She learned how to convert her pain and confusion into beautiful, meaningful stories. In my opinion, her anger is her juice.

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Book Out of My Past - Poster Child - Emily Rapp

At the end of Emily Rapp’s memoir Poster Child, thethe author writes of her participation in an international conference to address the needs of disabled women throughout the world.   Emily was born with a congenital bone-and-tissue disorder that would eventually force doctors to amputate one of her legs just below the hip.  She’s sitting at a table with six other disabled women when she is handed a piece of butcher paper and asked to illustrate a timeline of her life. By this time in the book, we know about Emily’s childhood and her religious background.  We know of her inner strength that drove her to overcome any obstacles that ever got in her way. 

When she draws herself on the paper, we see her in front of a mirror without any legs.  She’s devoted her life to holding her head high.  Emily Rapp is the “Poster Child.”  When she was six years old, the March of Dimes put her image on their posters and calendars.  She would proudly proclaim to her audience, “I might have one leg, but I’m not disabled.”

Poster Child is a portrait of courage. Emily Rapp tells us of things we areafraid to know.  When I first read her, I learned of the smell of her stump.  She was traveling through Africa, and at night she would have to take her leg off to rest.  She couldn’t handle the odor of burning rubber and stale sweat.  In Poster Child, she describes  her operations and challenges with intimate detail.  She grew up and grew out of one prosthesis after another.  The sockets were too tight.  The legs too short.   As normal as she tried to become, she often bled with the friction of movement.  Much of her childhood was spent hopping one-footed around various medical centers while doctors disappeared with her leg.   Much of her teen years were spent assembling her leg and her spirit to cope with her changing body.  In more than a few chapters, Emily shares her fear and apprehension of her first sexual encounters.  I mean, she is a “poster child.”  Very attractive, but is there a man out there that wants to sleep with a disabled woman.  Will she leave the leg on, or take it off?

I thought it was pretty cool that Emily worked her way towards the international conference at the end of her memoir, as if she was writing a mystery, and the conference would reveal the truth.   By this time we know two things: one, Emily is a very intelligent and determined young woman; and two, this book isn’t all about her.   Somewhere along the way, she has decided to stop hiding her disability but share it with others to set them free.

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The Loved One - John Lennon

The writing business Evelyn Waugh knows probably isn’t much different than the music business I know. Everybody loves you for one thing: your money. Literature, music, and here in Waugh’s novel “The Loved One,” even death is all too commercial. The money, the pressure and all the craziness pushes at you from all sides until you have to completely humiliate yourself to be what people want you to be.

In “ The Loved One,” Evelyn Waugh pushes back at all the money grubbers and phonies. His story takes place in L.A. in the forties. He writes of English ex patriots that have come to Hollywood to work in the film industry, and he writes of Americans that work in funeral parlors and cemeteries. In his novel, these two worlds collide, and whether the characters are British or American, all of them are fakes. Their sentiments are shallow and/or selfish. Just about the only people who are sincere and truthful in this novel are already dead and being prepped for a funeral.

I probably read this book on my own. I like books with unexpected endings, and this author is famous for going against tired formula. Just when you think you are getting into a serious romance, you'll get totally surpised. This book is sick and hilarious. I love it for both reasons.

The main character Dennis is a young English poet who has come to L.A. with the hopes of writing screenplays, but the only job he can find is writing condolence cards at pet semetary. Good! He gets his shot of reality really quick. His roommate, a fairly successful screenwriter, doesn’t receive his wake-up call until it’s too late. After twelve years of working for the same company, he is unceremoniously fired. No one even bothers to tell him. One afternoon, early in the novel, Dennis returns to their apartment to see his dejected roommate hanging by his neck from the rafters. That’ s sick, but I suppose the most disturbing aspect of this suicide is that it disturbs Dennis very little. From the people he’s met, and the things he has seen, this is par for the course in L.A. When Dennis is obligated to take care of the body, he appears to have all the feeling and compassion of the corpse itself.

I love this novel because Waugh gives us a character in Dennis that both attracts us and disgusts us. In the process of disposing of his roommates body, Dennis falls in love with a young woman who works at the mortuary. Wow! I suppose you have to have an insane amount of romance in your heart if you can lock in on a woman without being distracted by the image of dead bodies and the smell of embalming fluid. This guy Dennis just doesn’t care. What follows is the strangest love story that you will ever read. You will want to root for the guy, even though you know it’s going to end in a disaster. Someone is going to get burned (ha ha).

Peace,

John

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Amy's Pocket Tattoo - Descriptive Detail

Amy’s pocket tattoo is located just above her left breast.  Just above, the name of her former husband is emblazoned in cursive writing. It doesn’t just say “Blake” like a typical nametag would read.  It says “Blake’s” as if to say Amy feels comfortable tucked away inside.   The pocket and the nametag appear in black and white.  Actually, there is no white unless you count Amy’s skin.  My point is there is no red like the color of the valentine or blue like the color of the sky.  She is not trying to be dreamy or fancy here.  It’s like she is saying their love is every-day, working people’s love.  It’s not rainbows and unicorns.  It’s pure and simple.  I think it’s important that the pocket Amy wears above her breast closes with a button and a flap. From all accounts, Amy loved Blake with all her heart.  In my opinion, she feels settled in.  Like she is safe and protected.  Whatever she wears, whether it’s on the street or on the stage, people are going to see the nametag and know her heart belongs to Blake.   For all of us who love Amy and her music, we will see the irony in this tattoo.   We were inspired by her passion for her love and her art, but we were saddened by the way her obsession with Blake led to her downfall into drugs and depression.   Her most famous song – about her breakup with Blake – is still played all the time on the radio:  “We only said goodbye with words/ I died a hundred times/ You go back to her/ And I go back to Black..”  Clearly, there was nothing pure and simple about Amy’s relationship with Blake.      

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Furious - Crazy for You - Love - The Marriage(s) of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor

Here is what I like about reading:  You Never Know!  I expected to a lot of crazy stuff  in this book - that was there.  But, I also saw real love.  I mean, deep and unmistakable real love.  Not even all the money, drugs and alcohol could destroy what Dick and Liz felt for each other. In the end, they loved each other as much as they did from the beginning. 

I just finished Furious Love by Sam Kasner and Nancy Schoenberger.    It’s the story of Electric Love on the set of Cleopatra January 22, 1962.   When Richard Burton laid eyes on Elizabeth Taylor for the first time he laughed out loud.  He was dressed in a short-short tunic. His muscular thighs were bursting at the seams. Elizabeth was made up bright green eye-liner.  It was so thick it looked liked it was applied with a spoon. 

 But, that wasn’t the funny part.  As Marc Anthony fell madly in love with Cleopatra,  Richard and Elizabeth began a life-long love affair.  Richard would soon abandon the wife and children he dearly loved. Elizabeth would turn her back on her husband Eddie Fisher.  This was the funny part: from that very first scene everything they believed in – their families, ambitions, moralities – no longer mattered.

I liked the read from the beginning to the end.  The passion they shared for their craft never wavers.  Le Scandale distances them from their fans but brings them closer together.  The booze and drugs ignite vicious fights and inspire tearful reunions.    There’s money, diamonds and jets.  They live their dreams out in front of us.  My favorite part, however, is the letter Richard writes to Elizabeth just before he dies.   This is the one that appears in the book’s preface and sets the tone for the narrative.  I mean, beyond his brilliant talents as an actor, Richard can write.  Throughout three marriages and three divorces, he professes his love for Elizabeth with a series of letters, poems and apologies.   Drugs and alcohol ate away his talent and health, but they couldn’t touch his heart.  On his deathbed, Richard wrote  Elizabeth he loved her more than ever.  He just wanted to come home, he said.

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