Charlie "C.J."

Salt
In True Notebooks, many of the inmates struggle to maintain an intellectual outlook on life when their culture and background is so very different in that it is not cool to be smart so to speak. One of the characters, Barreda, notices a cloud and really appreciates it for the first time. He states that in his gang, when he was part of that life, he never really looked at anything past his gang. I'm sure that his entry to prison would have been a struggle because his culture was his gang. In fact, based on my reading so far, it feels like most of the prisoners wish to detach from their culture of gangs, drugs, and violence in order to be themselves. They all seem to really have a creative voice that would have been ill expressed in their lives outside of prision. My family wa all about being different. In World War II my great grand parents escaped from Russia and Poland so they would survive. My immediate family is struggleing to this day with our country's economy. Just paying the rent had been a challenge. But the thing about jews 9and italians for that matter) is that we are a stubborn people. We like challenges because that means we get to overcome them. Through all our struggles and hardships, we never do it alone. We always have each other and we always have God.

My Question
Most of the charaters in my book are/were affected by the preconception that a gang life is the only way to live. That is why most of them are in juvenile hall in the first place. Their preconception affected their decision making process to the piont of making that one wrong choice and haveing to spend the rest of their lives, if not the majority, in prison. In prison they discover that there is another way, that someone is listening, and that they do not have to fold to the stereotype that has beeen upon them. Personally, I am a very self consious person. Because of the way I walk, I always have this thought that people will find me a tad odd or off and not want to befriend me. I have struggled with this idea since elementary school. It has affected me in that I am usually a shyer person. I tend to be quieter in social situations and am only recently comming out of it. I am learning to be me and that its ok to be me. People can/will think what they want, but I know who I am. Self confedence is important but it must not fall into arrogance. As a chess player, I tend to over think, which will also affect me.