For Tuesday: True Believer, Part 3

Read all or at least most of Part 3 of True Believer for Tuesday's class, but don't worry about any questions this time. Just read for enjoyment, because I think you'll agree this is a pretty enjoyable book (even if you're too embarrassed to admit that you like it!). When you get to class next week, we'll do an in-class response in place of your questions, which might address one or more of the following ideas:

* What do you make of Dr. Rose's vocabulary lesson, where she insists, "We rely on cliches, we become cliches./We must not be ensnared/by our imagined limitations" (141)? Why might this be one of LaVaughn's most important lessons in the book?

* Why might the story of the pink jellyfish in Chapter 50 be a great metaphor for LaVaughn herself, as a college-bound kid in the inner-city? 

* At the end of Part Three, when LaVaughn gets the rude awakening that makes her "lifetime [jump] upside down." Does this epiphany come out of the blue? Or has the author subtly hinted at it throughout the book? Can we look back and see any signs or hints that LaVaughn, herself, might have noticed?

* One of the echoing words in this book is "uppity," which LaVaughn calls her mother, and her friends call her. We generally see this as a negative word, but how might the book suggest another definition/connotation for uppity? What makes both LaVaughn and her mother uppity? Why could it for both of them a redeeming quality?

* Related to the above, why do words matter in this book: not just what words are used, but how they are used? How does a relationship fall apart by a single word? Also, how can you see into someone's heart and mind by their use of a single word?