Bronx Masquerade

Tyrone is surprised by and appreciates the depth of Leslie’s poem. He also mentions that most of the students who want to participate in the open mic that day are girls, and he wishes more of the boys would step up.

Judianne is nodding off in class because she stayed up all night sewing a new outfit. She wants to look good while reading her poem during this Open Mike Friday. She describes herself as unintelligent, though Mr. Ward has told her otherwise. She can’t believe she’s writing poetry. She also compares herself to other girls in the class, like Tanisha Scott, who “ha[s] good hair and light skin” (62).

Judianne thinks she is “ugly”—her stepfather tells her she is—because she has dark skin. She likes her body, though, and she enjoys showing it off with her homemade outfits. She receives compliments from Sheila and Lupe on her clothes and notes that Lupe doesn’t realize how pretty she is.

Judianne learned to sew by helping her mom cut out patterns. She wishes she could write as well as she sews and use that creativity to “turn herself into somebody special” (63). She reflects that her mother hardly ever defends her against her stepfather, though she’s nicer when they’re alone.

In her poem, “Cocoon,” Judianne uses sewing as a metaphor to describe remaking herself, cutting, pinning, and stitching away all of her insecurities to create a perfect body. In remaking herself, she’d transform laughter and ridicule into applause.

Tyrone is confused about why all the girls in the class hate how they look. He notes that the guys don’t have that problem.

Last night, Lupe broke up with Marco because she realized he wouldn’t be a good father and she wouldn’t want to raise a baby alone like Gloria. Though she planned to do it for some time, it still hurt. Afterward, she called Leslie and told her about it. Leslie provided comfort, and they talked for a long time.

Though Lupe is alone, she has her friends, who are also single. She and Leslie talked about their loneliness. By the end of the chapter, Lupe is reminded that she’s not alone. She has her friends—Leslie, Janelle, and Gloria— and they are like family.

In Lupe’s short poem, “El Noche,” she shares images of the cold, silence, and the wind. She is relieved from her loneliness by the surprise of friendship.

Tyrone shares that Lupe’s voice is quiet, but her words are powerful. Mr. Ward asked Lupe to read her poem twice. Tyrone appreciates how the girls in the class are “soft and strong” (71), like his mom.

Janelle is surprised that Judianne has her own insecurities. She recounts running into Judianne in the bathroom and telling her that she liked her poem and related to it. However, Judianne responded that they had nothing in common and called Janelle “fat.”

Despite feeling hurt, Janelle understands Judianne’s discomfort with recognizing her own insecurities: “I’m not mad at her, though. I know there’s a part of her that’s as scared to look in the mirror as I am” (73). Though Judianne tries to deny it, Janelle knows they have more in common than either realized.

“Mirror, Mirror” is Janelle’s response to Judianne’s meanness. Using the image of the mirror, Janelle smashes the idea that she and Judianne have nothing in common. In the poem, they “meet in the mirror” (74), but Judianne reacts in fear and breaks the mirror. The glass shards only give her “another source of pain” (74).

Tyrone thinks Janelle’s poems—and everyone else’s—are getting better due to practice. Open Mike Fridays were once a month, but now they are once a week because so many students want to share.

Tanisha is tired of people commenting on her looks. She hopes Tyrone will stop calling her “caramel cutie. It bothers her that others only pay attention to those aspects of her. She caught Judianne playing with her hair last week, and she reflects that her cousin also envies her “good hair” and lighter skin. Last year, she was so fed up with people commenting on her hair that she cut it short. Another time, she tried washing her hair with detergent to get an Afro like her family members.

Now, she’s letting it grow back and is just going to be herself because no matter what she does to change her appearance, she gets unwanted attention. This includes sexual attention from boys and bullying from girls. Another lighter-skinned classmate, Sterling, has had an easier time since realizing that “God loves him just the way he is” (77).

Her friends, Diondra and Janelle, know who she really is. The three of them are working on a group project about the women of the Harlem Renaissance. They are featuring Georgia Douglas Johnson because few people in the class have heard of her. She also volunteered Diondra to create portraits of the women in their project. She hopes that with that kind of encouragement, Diondra will begin believing and taking pride in her artistic abilities.

In her poem, “For the Record,” Tanisha shares her family’s history—one of her enslaved ancestors was raped by her slaver, which is why there are lighter traits in her family. She asserts that this history doesn’t make her less Black, and she is proud of being Black.

Tyrone now understands why Tanisha gets mad at him every time he calls her “caramel cutie.” He respects her pride in her African ancestry. He wonders if they could connect over African music and thinks about playing African drum music to go with her poetry.