Blog for Week 2/22/15 - Bronx Masquerade Character Development

      In the book Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes, some of the characters changed almost completely. Take, for example, Janelle. In the beginning of the book, she was really shy to share her poems with the class and was extremely self-conscience about her weight. She always put herself down and said that she was ugly. She knew that she was smart, and she knew that she was a good person, but she hated the way she looked. But, by the end of the book, when she was reading her poem, she realized that her classmates were actually listening and enjoying her poem, not focusing on how she looked. She really began to accept herself and became more confident in sharing her poems. In the beginning of the book, she says, "Face it. Devon is Denzel Washington, and you are Thighs R Us. " She keeps telling herself that she is ugly and she will never be good enough to please Devon, the person who she has a crush on. But towards the end of the book, she says, "I'm glad somebody finds me beautiful, even if he is just eight years old! But maybe he's not the only one, though. Not anymore. The kids in Mr. Ward's class sure look at me differently these days.... and nobody cared about the size of my body. Not even me." She is noticing that the kids are starting to accept her, which leads to her finally accepting herself.

      Another character that changed was Diondra. In the beginning, she was really jealous of Raul because he was so confident in sharing his art. No one except Tanisha and her parents knew that she was good at drawing. And her dad really didn't approve. He always said that he wished that she was born a boy and that her height was wasted on her because she didn't play basketball. But, towards the end of the book, she started to become more confident with sharing her artwork and her poems. She even hung some of her art up on the wall in her class like Raul did. She also wrote a poem telling her dad that she was going to follow her dream instead of his. In the beginning, it says, "He's not too wild about my art. Mostly, he's disappointed, first off that I wasn't born a boy, and second that I don't play ball like one." And near that end in her poem she says, "It's time, Dad. Time you stop telling me who to be, how to live. This is my portrait. You choose your canvas. Let me choose mine."

        In the book, setting plays a huge part in what the characters are like. For example, Tyrone. He is always scared that he is going to die, since they don't really live in a good neighborhood. And he focuses so much on when he is going to die, that he doesn't really care about school or do his school work. The setting also affects characters like Steve and Leslie. Everyone in the book feels like they don't fit in, but Steve and Leslie especially because they are white people living in a black neighborhood. People don't really like them too much because they are white. For example, when Steve tried to join Wesley and Tyrone to do a cipher for Open Mike Friday, Tyrone laughed at him. ""Boy," I said. "Sit your white butt back down before you hurt yo'self."" They aren't really taken seriously in their own neighborhood.