Priscilla Pineda
English 15
Professor Lennon
February 2, 2011
The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight Up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life: Fever
At times people are scared of falling in love because they’re scared of their sexual identity; they’re scared of people judging them, or they’re scared of belonging in society. When you fall in love you need to learn how to accept yourself and your partner opinions, do not be afraid of society. In The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight up Stories of a Black Woman’s Life in the story “Fever”, the narrator finds love. Her lover is Stacey, and they both struggle with their love for each other because they are afraid society will not accept them as lesbians and are afraid of accepting themselves.
In “Fever”, the narrator, Frankie, is the protagonist and the antagonist is Stacey. The protagonist, Frankie falls in love with Stacey; and they start having a secret relationship because they are in fear of people calling them a “bulldagger” or “dyke”. Stacey, the antagonist, cannot admit that she is a lesbian and is in fear of what others may say. She tells Frankie that they should start seeing other people because she is scared that others may find out of their love affair. Frankie agrees to start seeing other people while they’re still seeing each other, but she starts noticing that Stacey is drifting away from her.
The two major conflicts in the story are fear of self acceptance and fear of being discovered by society. Frankie struggles with the fear that others will find out that they’re lesbians, but Frankie worries more about Stacey in the story. On page 115 Frankie the narrator, states, “I could see it was beating her down on the outside. But, Lord, what was it doing to her on the inside? Taunting her? Torturing her? Making her hate herself? What if, one day, she started to hate me, too?” In the story Stacey struggles with accepting herself as a lesbian and is afraid of society. Frankie was in love with Stacey, but she was scared of losing her because Stacey was afraid of being discovered as a lesbian. To deal with this society pressure they camouflaged their love by dating other people in which Frankie did not like, but she agreed upon it to make Stacey happy because she didn’t want anyone to notice, for Stacey, dating other people was also a way to figure herself out.
Towards the end of the story gets, Frankie tired of hiding and wants Stacey to commit just to her, but Stacey refuses and suggests seeing other people. On page 118 Frankie states, “I had to admit I was and nodded. But I realized I was tired of fear running us and I wasn’t scared that I’d give Stacey up for it. Which came as a revelation, I hadn’t recognized before that I felt that way.” Frankie realizes her feelings for Stacey and knows she wants to be with her forever. Stacey never confronts her true feeling for Frankie while Frankie always tried to tell her true feelings that she loved her. Stacey simply just ignores it. At the end of the story, Stacey is engaged to Ned which torments Frankie to tears because she realizes that Stacey and her will never have a life together as she has hoped.
In the story, Stacey is in denial because she never confronts her true feelings for Frankie. She is in fear of society; she decides to accept to Ned proposal of engagement because she wants to ignore and forget Frankie. Stacey goes through a difficult choice because she not sure if she made the right decision of getting engaged because deep down inside she still has true feeling for Frankie. Frankie was also read to make a choice of letting others find out about their love because she didn’t want to lose Stacey.
Reading this story of the struggles of sexual identity, I could relate to the story because my uncle is gay and it took him 10 years to tell my family. He dated women, but no one ever questioned it. Even he came out of the closet, he told everyone that he was scared of us not accepting him. But we didn’t care; we just wanted him to be happy. Reading this story I could see the eyes of Stacey because she got engaged just because she was in fear and refused to be called a lesbian. It is the same path my uncle took, he dated girls so order no one would judge him.
