Bronx Masquerade

The book Bronx Masquerade is discussion by a mix of twenty some students and their lives in the Bronx. Each student talks about their life and then writes a poem about it. First, most of the students were nervous or scared to read their poems during "Open mike". However, by the end of the year everybody in Mr. Ward's class had read at least once. In additon, people would comment on their classmates poems. I think we should do this every Friday in our class. I really enjoyed this but wonder if perhaps Nikki Grimes had written all of those peoms herself ?

Lucky 3

While walking down the street, Alice meets her rapist. After being confronted by him, Alice goes to her dorm and calls 911. Gregory Madison was the man who raped Alice and changed her life forever. After multiple court appearances, and Alice having to take the stand Greg was found gulity. He was sentenced to between 8 and 25 years. Weeks after the conviction, Alice's roommate raped in Alice's bed. This was the part I hate most about this book. The rapist must have been friends with Greg because he knew about Alice. In addition, he broke Alices and Lillas trust. "Lucky" had a very strange begining but in the end it took Alice Sebold a lot of courage to write about her life and I have immense respect for her.

Lucky 2

Alice decides to return to Syrcuse for the next year of college, surprising most of her friends. Most of her friends thought she would not return for the following years of college due to her rape the prior year. Alice's decison to return showed her strength and determination to not let the rape effect her. Despite her strength, lots of people knew about the rape and gave her bad looks. Alice still has many friends from last year, but is not living with them as she has been assigned to an all female dormitory. In addition, with all of her classes she does not really have time to see them. Alice is taking multiple English workshops ( English Classes for poetry and story writing). In these workshops she makes several new friends including a proffessor. She writes a poem about her rapist which indicates that if she were to meet him that she would kill him. This strongly worded poem receives a negative response from one student who refuses to comment on it when asked by the proffeser to do so. Later this girl trys to commit suicide because her brothers used to rape her. This was my favorite part of the book because Alice now knows that she is not the only person who has been raped. As a result of this revelation, these two girls can relate.