Goldie Barajas
English 1B
1/18/11
Response to Place& Setting for “Memory: Mee Street and Beyond”
from the book
The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life
by Frankie Lennon
The essay “Memory: Mee Street and Beyond” from the book The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life by Frankie Lennon is a story that took place in the Truman and Eisenhower years, which were from the 1940’s-1960’s. During this time Jim Crow laws were in control, therefore, the narrator lived on the “black” side of Knoxville, Tennessee. Mee Street, was the location where the narrator’s first home resided, which is one of the places the writer decides to focus on. I, as a reader noticed this particular place is important to the writer through the description of the place she provides me with, through the narrator’s feelings and the usage of comparison and contrast between her first home and her second home in 1919 Dandridge Avenue. The narrator clearly states that once she moved to Dandridge Avenue she became “something of a loner, finding things to do in solitary…” (pg.5) compared to her first home in which her playmates were just across the street. In Dandridge Avenue, the narrator had “a huge front and back yard that her mother found spacious enough to host her church’s two week Vacation Bible School.” (pg.4) the narrator even had room for a dog she named Pudgy. Also, the narrator provides the reader with memories of her summers in Dandridge Avenue, some are: “the delight of getting to go barefoot everyday and wiggle my toes in warm grass…catching fireflies in a jar at dusk and trying to figure out how their tails lit up…”(pg.5)
On the other hand, Memory is important to the writer. I know this because at the end of her essay the writer reveals to us directly that she wrote this essay based on the Knoxville she lived in which it is no longer around but yet lives in her remembering and remembering is part of her memory. Memory tells her and the reader the story of who she is. Therefore, in the end the impression or main idea I got from this place was that it is important to her because she simply remembers it. This place and her experiences there shaped her to write this essay, to think back and reflect on her childhood; and as I have always thought one’s childhood or past is the glossary to one’s book on one’s life.
