Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!
For this session we took a close look at “Tar Beach” by Faith Ringgold, posted below.
Our prompt was: โWrite about what you will always remember.โ
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Credit: Faith Ringgold (1996.) New York: Penguin Random House
I will always remember when the stars fell down around me and lifted me up above the George Washington Bridge
I could see our tiny roof top with Mommy and Daddy and Mr. and Mrs. Honey, our next door neighbors, still playing cards
as if nothing was going on, and Be Be, my baby brother, laying real still on the mattress, just like I told him to, his eyes like huge floodlights tracking me through the
sky.
Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical. Laying on the roof in the night with starts and skyscraper buildings all around me made me feel rich, like I owned all that I could see. The bridge was my most prized possession.
Daddy said the George Washington Bridge was the longest and most beautiful bridge in the world and that it opened in 1931 on the very day I was born. Daddy worked on the bridge, hoisting cables. Since then, Iโve wanted that bridge to be mine.
Now I have claimed it all. All I had to do was fly over it for it to be mine forever. I can wear it like a giant diamond necklace, or just fly over it and marvel at its sparkling beauty. I can fly, yes, fly. Me, Cassie Louise Lightfoot, only eight years old and in the third grade and I can fly.
That means I am free to go wherever I want to for the
rest of my life.
Daddy took me to see the new union building he is
working on. He can walk on steel girders high up in the
sky and not fall. They call him The Cat.
But still he canโt join the union because Grandpa wasnโt a member. Well Daddy is going to own the building cause Iโm gonna fly over it and give it to him. Then it wonโt matter that heโs not in their ole union or whether heโs colored or a half breed Indian like they say.
Heโll be rich and wonโt have to stand on 24 story high girders and look down. He can look up at his building going up. And Mommy wonโt cry all winter when Daddy goes to look for work and doesnโt come home. And Mommy can laugh and sleep late like Mrs. Honey and we can have ice cream every night for dessert.
Next Iโm going to fly over the ice cream factory just to
make sure we do.
Tonight weโre going up to Tar Beach. Mommy is roasting peanuts and frying chicken and Daddy will bring home a watermelon. Mr. and Mrs. Honey will the beer and their old green card table. And then the stars will fall around me and I will fly to the union building.
Iโll take Be Be with me. He has threatened to tell Mommy and Daddy if I leave him behind.
I have told him itโs very easy, anyone can fly. All
you need is somewhere to go that you canโt get to any other way. The next thing you know, youโll be flying among the stars.
Connections in Narrative Medicine 