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Created: October 24, 2003
Latest Update: October 24, 2003
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

I Can Do This: Answerability U.

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

Heroine (I could use some help with heroine names.)sat quietly on the front porch in the shade of the elm. (Do elms grow in Southern California? The old apple tree? Guess I could use some help with trees. I've got a sycamore in my backyard. We could make it a sycamore.) I can do this, she murmured softly to herself. Well, yeah, with the help of a few miracles. If they give me financial aid, and if I don't have to work too much of the time, and if I can get the classes, and if I can find a place to study where Henry's not always blasting the radio or the TV.

Dolly, Heroine's mom, came out and sat down with her under the shade of the old elm or apple or sycamore tree.

Worried?

No, I can do this. I know I can. It's just that, well, I'm not Johnny. I mean, Johnny's a genius. He never even had to study. I'm not Johnny. I mean I'm not stupid, but I'm not that smart. I'm gonna have to study.

But you do study.

That's different. You don't really have to do very much to get out of Moleville High. I didn't even score very high on those stupid tests they kept giving us.

But you had substitutes for the better part of the last two years.

I know. But that's not gonna help me in college. I have to take some kind of English placement test. You know we hardly ever got to write anything. I'm scared they'll say I can't write.

Well, now that's silly to start worrying before you even get there. Besides that doesn't make sense for them to say you can't write, when you haven't had hardly any practice. Maybe they'll have a special course in writing.

Yeah, a dummy course.

Honey, that's nonsense.If you pay attention in class, you won't have any trouble.

Yeah. It's cool, Mom. I can do this.

Well, don't brood about it. Why don't you go with Carol to the movies?

OK. You're right.

* * * * *

Carol and Heroine driving to movie.

I think it's good you're going to college, Heroine.

Then why won't you go, too?

Your grades are a lot better than mine. Besides, I gotta earn some money. I'm tired of not having money to spend. I want to get some cool dance dresses, and get some nice things for work. And I want to save up for a car.

Me, too, but Mom says it's better to stay in school. I'm not so sure. Lots of high school was boring. Do you think it'll be boring?

Sure. School is boring. I think it's some kind of test to see how bored you can get before you can't take anymore.

I liked history. Howard Zinn's version of history makes lots more sense than that stuff they usually make us read.

Well, yeah. But I don't think you can talk about Howard Zinn's version of history at a Saturday night party.

Maybe we should. One of my teachers said if we don't start paying more attention to history we're going to end up having to go all through the battles for labor rights again. I was gonna go to help out on one of the picket lines with the markets, but Mom said I shouldn't get myself identified with trouble makers. Mom says that things are a lot better than when she was a girl, and that if you keep your mouth shut and work hard and study and get a degree, then you can get ahead.

Well, I heard someone say that with that new labor treaty they're hiring Indians to do the work they're supposed to be training us to do in college. That doesn't sound like we're gonna get ahead even if we go to college.

* * * * *

I can do it
I know I can
I'm as smart as they are
And I can learn if I try.

I can do it
I know I can
But sometimes they say words
I know I don't understand.
Oh, they don't try to help
They just wait till I say it wrong
Then they smirk knowingly behind my back

They respect words, you know
But only their own
Our English is wanting
Till we spawn an Amiri Baraka.

Even then
"He's not Shakespeare."
And of course, if he were,
Shakespeare, that is
Why then it's unsanctioned plagiarism.

Double standards, double consciousness
Always trying to be as good as they think they are
And then discovering we were really OK.
Way back there, to start with. Ideology rules where we are judged There are ideal feminist bodies, and ideal male performances, and an ideal way to be in the world of moneyed elite. Then there's the rest of the world But what do they count Bullshit. X? There's no right way to be. Just the power of the moneyed elite to exploit the work of the rest to gain more money for more power for the elite to exploit more fully the work of the rest. answerability

Notes: She goes to school. she meets to the one who called her dummy. She meets officers who aren't there. She takes a job. They make her take off to get answers. (one who's writing on NFL in stat) they send her letters, wrong info, no one answers questions, meets s.o. who gets a scholarship because she's first in college. How did she know how to do that.

Goes to her friend Carol, who says

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