And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students

Olivia, who always becomes depressed around the holidays because she doesn’t have a family, is spared having a lonely Thanksgiving when Sadi and his mother invite her to their house for a Southern-style meal. Her trial has been continued from December to January. She still hopes to submit her application to Babson College in Massachusetts by February, but she can’t get out of bed and misses several days of school in a row.

Little charges her class to write an epiphany about their lives based on the insights that Stephen Dedalus gains in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Miesha writes about the sexual abuse that she suffered when she was young and the way in which her brother Raymond has functioned as her savior. Little discusses Stephen Dedalus with her students: “‘The highest truth for him is that he is the creator of his own life’” (183). She tells her students that they also control their own destiny.

Little and Braxton are worried about a very bright student named Claudia. She always received good grades until junior year. This year, while she completes exams in Little’s class, she crumples them up and puts them into her backpack. She won’t be able to get into college if she fails English. Braxton has known her since seventh grade, and he knows that she is intellectually curious. When he speaks to her, he tries to figure out why she is interested in literature but has decided to fail by not passing in her work. She tells him she may not go to college and refuses to tell him what’s really going on.

Claudia’s mother, Margarita, went to college in Guatemala and taught elementary school. Margarita left her comfortable life and decided to stay in LA after visiting the city. Claudia’s father is from El Salvador and works as a parking attendant, while her mother works as a maid. Margarita taught Claudia at home, and she was very advanced in the early grades. However, after 10th grade, she failed several classes but made up the work before the summer.

When her parents were not home, Claudia discovered from going through old documents that her mother had had two children who had died in Guatemala—one at 5 months and one at 9 months. Her husband had also died. Claudia now understands why her mother was always so protective toward her. Though Claudia takes the exam on James Joyce, she refuses to hand it in. Olivia is the only student who does not show up for the test.

Little begins speaking about Wuthering Heights before the winter break. She tells the students that she can arrange for them to have extra-credit opportunities if they are not among the students who denounce her to others. When Braxton passes her in the hall, she refuses to greet him. He thinks of a parent’s comment about Little: “‘She’s crazy. But I’d sure hate to lose her’” (191). Braxton is worn out from his commute, dealing with two young children, and contending with students he is worried about. Sabreen has gotten a GED, and he fears she may not return to school when she is married. Toya plans to enter the Air Force or nursing school. He is worried about Claudia, Olivia, and Sadi (who showed up late for a speech tournament and was disqualified). Braxton wonders how he will make it through the rest of the year.

Most of the students spend the winter break working. Little visits her sister and her two children but returns to school in a foul mood. She returns the students’ essays, on which Curt has received 100%.

The students begin discussing Wuthering Heights. Latisha says of Heathcliff in the novel, “Dang, everyone doin’ me wrong” (195). Little argues that Heathcliff chose the life he lived and that everyone can control their own destiny. Sadi, however, challenges Little when she says, “Literature shaped me. Not my parents or the world around me” (195). He quickly points out that Little’s parents bought her books, while other parents took drugs and negatively impacted their children. Latisha continues to give her opinion about the book using words like “nigga” (196), but Little is glad Latisha is speaking up.

As the students file out of class, Little praises Curt and tells him that Stanford would be crazy not to accept him. Curt is an anomaly at Crenshaw. Both of his parents attended the school, and they both went to college. Though they divorced, his father, a salesperson at an electronics company, remains involved in his son’s life. His mother is a chiropractor, and they live in View Park, called Los Angeles’ “golden ghetto” (197). His mother always encouraged him to wear preppy clothes and use proper English, but Curt got picked on for doing so in the mainstream classes he attended. He tried to fit in during junior high by not working so hard, and his mother enrolled him in a private Catholic school where he felt out of place. His parents were opposed to his enrolling in Crenshaw, but they allowed him to enroll in the gifted program on a trial basis. Curt became reinvested in school, and his mother was impressed by the program. Curt made the mistake of wearing red, a Blood color, and he was shot at by Crips. He never made that mistake again.

After his sophomore year, he received a scholarship to a summer program at Stanford, where white students questioned whether he was there only because of his color. He dedicated himself to his work to prove to them that he was worthy of being there, and he often spoke up in class. At the end of the program, a Stanford administrator wrote to Braxton to tell him how impressive Curt was, and when he returned to Crenshaw, Curt kept up his hard work. When a local news program wants to run a program on beating the odds, they select Curt as their focus. They ignore Braxton’s comments that Curt comes from a wealthier, more professional background than the other students. Curt’s basketball career is not as successful, but his father tells him to concentrate on academics instead.

Little seethes over a memo in which the principal tells her to stop making derogatory remarks about Moultrie, who wants to put the dispute behind her.

Moultrie spends a long time teaching her class The Scarlet Letter. She thinks it’s more important to help them understand the historical and social forces that shape their lives than to hurry through books. In teaching about The Scarlet Letter, Moultrie reads aloud from the book and puts things into terms her class can understand. For example, she says of Chillingworth in the novel, “‘[w]hat old man wouldn’t want some fine tender girl like that’” (205). She also tells her class that they are going to have to learn to write and speak correctly to command respect in the white world.

On another day, Moultrie instructs her students to write about their views of interracial marriage, and she connects The Scarlet Letter to their lives in South-Central. For example, she compares the idea of sin in the book to a local crack dealer named Freeway Ricky Ross. She then starts the class reading Jubilee, “the black Gone with the Wind” (205) by Margaret Walker, who interviewed her own grandmother for her book, as her grandmother’s mother had been in slavery. Moultrie believes it’s important to give the students a historical context for their lives from the black perspective. At the end of the slavery unit, they will have a soul food lunch.

Moultrie assigns her students to interview a woman or man over 65 who can speak about racism and racial prejudice, and many interview relatives who lived in the Jim Crow South. Little is irate, as she does not feel Moultrie’s assignments are preparing her students for the AP class. Moultrie’s students interview relatives who were shot at in white towns or thrown forcibly out of offices when applying for jobs. She reads to them about Elizabeth Eckford, who helped integrate Little Rock schools in 1957 and who was taunted by a mob, and she tells them of her own experiences with racism. She encourages them to succeed and tells them that she loves all of them like a mother.

Many people criticize gifted programs. To enter Crenshaw, students must have an IQ over 125 or score in the top 20% on national math and English exams. Before the Crenshaw program started, gifted students were bussed to white areas. Some teachers in South-Central also dislike the program because they claim it takes all the best and brightest out of the mainstream programs. However, a US Department of Education report finds that minority students aren’t generally challenged enough but that they can achieve when they are (214-15).

Olivia returns to school after the winter break. Her car broke down over the break, and she was forced to spend most of it at her foster home, where she got drunk with another girl. She still awaits her court date.

Corwin drives Olivia to her court date at Eastlake, the busiest juvenile court in the country, filled with rough-looking youth. Her lawyer, Peter Weiss, arrives and chastises Olivia for not being repentant enough with the court officer. Olivia’s foster mother, Gretchen Fairconnetue, arrives, and she says she hasn’t decided whether Olivia can still live with her. She was considering throwing Olivia out when she was arrested. If Olivia can’t stay with her foster mother, she will be sent to a camp for juvenile defenders. Olivia considers this unfair, as her co-defendant was sentenced to probation because she has parents. Olivia’s foster mother is noncommittal about taking her back until Weiss promises to try to get her more money because Olivia is on probation. Weiss tells them it’s better for them to return in a few weeks. He reminds Olivia’s foster mother that Olivia will be sent to camp and taken out of school if she refuses to keep Olivia.

Olivia returns to school, where the students are discussing Wuthering Heights during the last class before the final exam. Little engages the students in a discussion about the true meaning of love. Little asks Olivia about her court date and advises her to appear more apologetic instead of cavalier; she tells Olivia to look up the word “cavalier” in the dictionary.

Little passes out the final to her students. It is a three-part exam in which the third part asks the students to address a character who has made the greatest impact on their lives. Meanwhile, Braxton receives a call from Olivia’s social worker. If Olivia shows up for the rest of the year at school and doesn’t go AWOL, she shouldn’t be sent to the juvenile camp. However, if she doesn’t follow these rules, she should be taught a lesson and sent to the camp. Olivia shows up late but takes Little’s final, while Claudia, though she takes the final, refuses to hand it in. She will be given an F, will be dropped from the class, and will have to make up her grade at night school if she wants to go to college.

The “inciting moment” (226) that drove Little to become a teacher was John F. Kennedy’s assassination when she was in third grade. At some moments, she claims she was inspired to teach; at others, she says she needed a job. Corwin says that “both stories contain elements of truth” (227).

Little was raised in Lomita, a working-class suburb south of LA. She is one of six children. Her mother was a nurse, and her father was a house painter. She was the intellectual of the group. She attended Cal State University Long Beach, and, when she was 20, became involved with her drama teacher and moved in with him. She obtained her degree, went on for a teaching credential, and then taught at the same magnet school as her boyfriend. She was a natural drama teacher, and her life was going well until her boyfriend told her he wanted to pursue a relationship with another woman. Little moved into the guest house on his property and lived there for two years before finally accepting the painful end to their relationship. She was heartbroken and has in many ways not recovered from this breakup.

She devoted herself to her drama job, working long hours with the students on productions. She was accused but exonerated of having sexual relationships with male students—a misunderstanding arising out of when she house sat for a student’s parent when the student was not there. She worked at another school and then took a sabbatical to produce a play about Bob Dylan. She then worked in a public relations firm before going back to teaching in Watts and eventually winding up at Crenshaw, where she impressed both Braxton and Noble with her ability. Half of the students passed the AP English exam in her first year—a very high rate for a school like Crenshaw.

She owns a duplex in Culver City; she rents out one apartment and lives in the other with her three Papillon dogs. Her house is often a gathering spot for friends and students, and she works part-time in a halfway house for juvenile offenders, teaching them computer skills.

Little admits that if she had her own family, she might not get so worked up about what happens at school. Like the other teachers, she fumes when she’s asked to submit a copy of her final exam. She yells at two gang members in the hallway who are cutting classes, and she promises to give her students “‘the ride of their lives’” (234) next semester.