All-Bright Court (26 page)

Imani All Mine

Connie Porter's eagerly anticipated, intensely affecting story of Tasha Dawson, fifteen years old and the mother of a baby girl, brings together her keen insight into childhood and her firsthand knowledge of life in the ghetto that is Tasha's home. In her own pitch-perfect voice, Tasha recounts her days of diapers and schoolwork, of jumping rope and dodging bullets. Her daughter's name, Imani—which means “faith”—is a sign of her fundamental trust and self-determination. Tasha herself, a child mothering a child, and the memorably singular characters who surround her reveal the pains of poverty and the unconquerable power of the human spirit.

1. To what extent does Connie Porter avoid presenting Tasha as a stereotypical unwed teenage mother? What makes Tasha the singular, sympathetic character that she is?
   
2. Porter has said, “I see
   Imani All Mine
   as being a kind of bridge, a way for adult women and adolescent women to have some conversations about some issues women face.” What are some of those issues? Are the issues raised in this novel applicable
   only
   to women?
   
3. In what ways does Tasha become “grown” and in what ways does she remain a child? What personal, familial, social, and cultural factors influence her in both respects? To what extent is her ceasing to be a child the result of an accumulation of experiences or of a single experience? To what extent is she a grown woman by the novel's end?
   
4. How would you describe the relationship between Tasha and her mother, past and present? What events and what personal traits cause changes in that relationship? Why cannot Earlene show more sympathy and understanding to a daughter whose situation is so similar to what hers once was?
   
5. Imani reports that “Mrs. Poole say you want respect from your child, give respect to your child.” How does respect or lack of respect affect the lives of all the people in Tasha's world? What kinds of respect are seen as important? What are the consequences of disrespect? What instances are there of respect and disrespect irrevocably changing the lives of the individuals involved?
   
6. What lessons does Tasha learn about being a daughter, being a mother, being a friend, being a woman, and becoming a responsible adult? Where and how does she learn these lessons? How does what Tasha learns compare with what you learned as a teenager? To what extent is Tasha self-taught in this regard?
   
7. Imani means faith, “in some African language.” In what ways does Imani embody faith for Tasha? The preacher of the New Light of the Covenant church says, “You need faith. In your life. In your heart.” What kinds of faith are present in the novel, and why are they important to those who profess or claim them? What is the “faith that's all mine” with which the book closes?
   
8. Describing the morning-after memorial to Stephan Richardson, Tasha tells us, “Seems like memorials be everywhere now. . . . I ain't never seen a memorial where the person resting in peace was older than twenty-one.” What do these rites tell us about the world in which Tasha lives and the world in which we live? What is the future of a community where there are so many memorials for children? What special significance does the final memorial have?
   
9. What is the importance of the single biblical quotation in the novel, the preacher's reading of Isaiah 40:31 in chapter II? In what ways are the people of this book “a waiting people,” as the preacher claims? In what ways are we all “a waiting people”?
   

FOR DISCUSSION

1. How do the chapter headings help us to understand each novel's characters, action, and principal themes? What purposes are served by the
   Imani All Mine
   chapter headings being drawn from childrens songs and games? Do the chapter headings in
   All-Bright Court
   have a similar coherence?
   
2. What similarities and differences are there between the presentations of black families in the two novels? To what extent is family structure intact in both books, and to what extent are families in various states of disintegration? How do various forces—personal, social, economic, and cultural, for example—influence family cohesion and family disintegration?
   
3. Porter has said, “I think God opens doors in people's lives.” What doors open for the individuals of these two novels, and what or who opens those doors? What do the characters do with those open doors?
   
4. What incidents of youth violence and crime occur in the two novels? How does Porter handle these incidents? How are the acts of violence in the 1960s and '70s of
   All-Bright Court
   similar to or different from those in Tasha's more contemporary world? What causes, consequences, and possible solutions does Porter attach to youth violence and crime?
   
5. At one point, Tasha loses patience and shakes Imani, “Because I was feeling like I was some kind of prisoner to her and I can't never get away.” What instances are there in the two novels of characters thinking of themselves as prisoners? In this regard, how are the two novels similar or different? To what extent do you think Porter views her characters as prisoners?
   
6. What instances of overt and disguised racism occur in the novels? In what ways do the kinds and degree of racism change or remain the same between the time of
   All-Bright Court
   and the time of
   Imani All Mine
   ? What are the effects on blacks, whites, and Puerto Ricans and on their communities? Do the characters' reactions to racism reflect historical reality? Do they suggest ways of correcting or ending racism?
   
7. In what ways are the personal, social, economic, and cultural issues faced by the teenagers and adults of the two books similar or different? Which of these issues may be encountered in any society at any time, and which are specific to the times and communities portrayed in the two novels?
   

C
ONNIE
P
ORTER
grew up near Buffalo, New York, the second youngest of nine brothers and sisters. After graduating from SUNY-Albany in 1981, she earned an M.F.A. from Louisiana State University and later attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She has taught English and creative writing at Milton Academy and Emerson College in Massachusetts and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Her six
Addy
books have sold more than three million copies. Named a regional winner in
Granta's
“Best Young American Novelists” contest for
All-Bright Court
, Porter lives in Virginia.

 

A C
ONVERSATION WITH
C
ONNIE
P
ORTER

 

What writers have influenced your work? Whom do you like to read?

As a young girl I loved reading stories about girls and read a number of books by Lois Lenski and Beverly Cleary. But when I became a teen, I was more interested in reading stories about and by black writers. I read Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, Nikki Giovanni, Richard Wright, Louise Meriwether, Rosa Guy, and Maya Angelou. I very much admire all of their work and also the work of Toni Morrison, Jean Toomer, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel García Marquez, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, and Terry McMillan.

 

How did you come up with idea for
All-Bright Court
?

The novel grew out of a short story that I wrote for an assignment during my last year at LSU. At that point it was only twelve pages. I had always wanted to write more about where I grew up, and about the steel industry there. This book gave me the chance to do both.

 

In
Imani All Mine
, Tasha is black, and poor, and a teenager with a baby. By making her all these things, isn't she a stereotype?

Tasha is far from being a stereotype. Tasha's general description does fit that of thousands upon thousands of black girls, and this is partly the reason why I wrote this book. I grew up very poor. I'm one of nine children who were raised in a housing project, went to public schools, public universities. I feel truly blessed because of my upbringing. Never have I lost sight of the fact that as a child, because of my class and color, some people actually did stereotype me as doomed to fail. Not only me, but also every child my mother gave birth to, every child on my street, on my block, in my neighborhood. Of course, I'm talking about a time twenty-five, thirty years in the past, but I don't feel much of a shift in attitude today.

 

You write about black family life. How do you see the state of the black family, especially poor families?

It is easy to say that the family structure is falling apart. There are many single-parent homes. But in many cases where you find an “intact” structure, the problems of increasing violence in poor neighborhoods, the influx of drugs like crack, the increase in the dropout rate, and the lack of job opportunities make it hard for families. Parents can control only what goes on in their houses. You have true warlike conditions in some of these neighborhoods. There are some very real pressures and concerns that did not exist when I was growing up in a housing project.

 

How would you describe yourself as a writer?

I would describe myself as a black female writer. I surely have been black and female all my life, and now, because I am a writer, I do not want to stop describing myself in that way. I do not fear that, because there is some descriptive tag before the word “writer,” I will be pigeonholed. Racism and sexism are what can pigeonhole you. They can limit, even stop you. Not describing myself as a black woman will not prevent that from happening.

C
ONNIE
P
ORTER
is the author of
All Bright Court, Imani All Mine,
and the Addy books in the Pleasant Company's American Girls series, which has sold more than 3 million copies. Porter was a fellow at Bread Loaf and was named a regional winner in
Granta
's Best Young American Novelist contest. She currently lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia.