A Thousand Worlds: 2018

Vanetta Evans broke my heart.

I briefly mentioned her in my last microblog. I was using her to prove a point, so I couldn’t get too deep into her life story, but she really deserves a full-length telling of her tale.

Vanetta Evans is 20 years old and, when we first meet her, is staying in the Lodge, a homeless shelter, with Crystal Mayberry. She is a mother of three young children. The oldest is Kendal Jr. He is four years old, but he’s very mature for his age. He has to be for his mother. She had him when she was sixteen. A year later she had Tembi, her daughter, and another year later she had Bo-Bo, a son. When a daycare worker dropped Bo-Bo on his head, he began having seizures. Every time he has one, Vanetta rushes him to the hospital. Her boyfriend at the time was abusive and provided nothing. Well, he did once.
Vanetta’s hours at Old Country Buffet were cut from five days a week to one. She couldn’t afford to pay her electricity bill and was about to get her lights shut off. She had no way to pay to keep her electricity and the rent. With the threat of losing her apartment and her children to Child Protective Services looming over her shoulder, she felt helpless. To “help”, her friends suggested that they rob two women they saw walking by. Her boyfriend gave her friend a gun and Vanetta took the purses. The cops caught them, Vanetta was fired and evicted, and she took her kids to the Lodge.

The main reason I wanted to talk about Vanetta was that of her sentencing hearing. The judge says there’s nothing stopping her from committing a crime like that again, so they can’t take any chances. I didn’t care too much about what the judge was literally saying. What Desmond writes next, however, was heartbreaking to me. He writes: “What the judge was saying, in essence, was: We all agree that you were poor and scared when you did this violent, hurtful thing, and if you had been allowed to go on working five days a week at Old Country Buffet, refilling soup pots and mopping up frozen yogurt spills, none of us would be here right now. You might have been able to save enough to move to an apartment that was de-leaded and clean in a neighborhood without drug dealers and with safe schools. With time, you may have been able to get Bo-Bo the medical treatment he needs for his seizures, and maybe you could have even started taking night classes to become a nurse, like you always wanted. And who knows, maybe you could have actually become a nurse, a real nurse with a uniform and everything. Then you could really give your kids a childhood that would look nothing like the one Shortcake gave you. If you did that, you would walk around this cold city with your head held high, and maybe you would eventually come to feel that you were worth something and deserving of a man who could support you other than by lending you his pistol for a stickup or at least one who didn’t break down your door and beat you in front of your children. Maybe you would meet someone with a steady job and get married in a small church with Kendal standing proudly up front by the groom and Tembi as the poofy-dressed flower girl and Bo-Bo as the grinning, toddling ring bearer, just like you always dreamed it, and from that day on your groom would introduce you as “my wife.” But that’s not what happened. What happened was your hours were cut, and your electricity was about to be shut off, and you and your children were about to be thrown out of your home, and you snatched someone’s purse as your friend pointed a gun at her face. And if it was poverty that caused this crime, who’s to say you won’t do it again? Because you were poor then and you are poor now. We all see the underlying cause, we see it every day in this court, but the justice system is no charity, no jobs program, no Housing Authority. If we cannot pull the weed up from the roots, then at least we can cut it low at the stem” (Desmond 267). Vanetta knew what she could have been worth. Could things have come in the way of this dream? Absolutely. Even if she had kept her hours, several things could have happened to change the course of her life. Yet this life was a possibility. The only thing in the way of it was her boss. By cutting her hours, they cut away her stability, her self-confidence, and her chance at a steady future. She lost a life for herself, her children, and her grandchildren after that. It wasn’t the crime that took this away from her. However, the crime did take something. She is sentenced to 81 months in the prison system for emptying those two purses. 15 months in the prison, 66 months under supervision. Kendal, expressionless, watches her leave in handcuffs. He stays strong for his mother for the last time for over a year to come.

Vanetta committed a crime. That much I can say. I can’t say that she wasn’t a victim. With three children crammed into a tiny, filthy apartment, electricity about to be cut, and the threat of eviction, she was desperate. Desperation leads to dangerous things. She made a bad choice, but it wasn’t a “rich kid getting drunk and running people over” bad choice. And, unlike that rich kid, she got prison time for her decision. Vanetta lost everything. She certainly lost more than the women she robbed. She’s out of prison by now, seeing as this book was published in 2016, but she still has to get another job, find a house, take GED classes, and take care of her children. She’s not confined, but she’s trapped.

Anyone who says that America provides her with limitless options is lying.

Anyone who says she is free is lying.

And anyone who says she is lucky to live where she lives is lying.

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This final half of Evicted was primarily focused on children.

The whole book was wrapping up. We got to see some recovery stories (Scott moving into his own apartment and staying off heroin), some “recovery” stories (Crystal losing her house and her monthly SSI checks but becoming a prostitute and savoring her religion even more), and some really tragic endings. The thing is, there was only one good ending that involved children. The Hinkinstons moved into a house in Brownsville, Tennessee after the birth of Malik Jr. Every other family with kids gets a terrible end.

Arleen, one of the first tenants we meet in the story, has many children (shown in my first nonfiction microblog). When I made that character map, I noted in my written explanation that she only interacted with two of her children in the story. Since then, I’ve learned that the rest of her children were taken by Child Protective Services and placed with other families. In this half of the story, she interacts with Boosie, another one of her children. He and Jori do have a sibling dynamic, but it’s clear that they don’t see each other often. The children that Arleen still has custody of, Jori and Jafaris, are taken by Child Protective Services in this half as well. They come back once Arleen gathers the money to put electricity back in her apartment.

Another mother in this story is Pam Reinke. This half really highlights how racism affects her life. People with terrible lives always want someone to hate and blame for their problems. Pam and Ned (especially Ned) blame people of color. Unfortunately for them, they’re looking for an affordable living space for them and their 4 ½ children. They can’t afford to pick and choose how white their neighborhood is. They still try. Eventually, they get one, but Pam is unhappy. Ned treats her and her children, especially her mixed children, horribly. Pam is still racist but she’s a mother first. She feels like a failure of a mother for letting her children be called awful things. Yet, she believes she’s tied to Ned. She needs the income and can’t leave him. She tells the girls “that Ned is the devil” with the hope that they won’t listen to him (Desmond 239). We’ll never know if it’s enough.

Vanetta Evans is a new character in this half and a mother of three. She lives with Crystal. We don’t see a lot of her in the book, so I don’t have a lot to write here, but where she ends up is pretty tragic. At a low point in her life, she went out with some friends. Her friends decided to rob some women and tasked Vanetta with taking the bags. Vanetta, confused and scared, agreed. Her story ends with her going on trial and being sentenced to nearly 7 years in prison in front of her children. It’s a short, sad story.

Once the cycle of poverty begins, it’s incredibly hard to get out of it. It’s hardest for women who, more often than not, are mothers. All of these women were teen mothers. According to the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, 59% of teen mothers never complete high school. When a teenage mother is impoverished, she raises her children in poverty. Typically, her children will never get what they need. This can lead to several problems from depression to malnutrition to simple lack of education. According to Committee on Adolescence and Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption, and Dependent Care, the child also has a 25% chance of becoming an adolescent parent in turn. Not only do these teen mothers go on to live awful lives, but they set up awful lives for their children.

Children are the future. This is said over and over again. However, looking at the lives of Arleen, Pam, and Vanetta, there are certain children who are not being taken care of. Teen mothers and their children in turn are leaving school and leading lives that will only continue the cycle of poverty.

That doesn't sound like a real future. Not to me.

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I have a lot of feelings about Lenina Crowne.

To start, I don't like her in the slightest. She is annoying, entitled, and the embodiment of high society. She sees herself as essentially nothing and yet everything at the same time. She could be in a Leia-style gold bikini smelling like a flower dipped in ecstasy and ask why the savages were so primitive. I hate her. However, I really pity her character. Lenina was brought up in a world without love. That’s sad enough, but nearly every character in this book was raised without love, so that isn’t my sole reason for pitying her. I pity her because she falls in love herself and doesn’t know it.

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I swear I’m not a romantic person. At least, not really. But even I can comprehend that John and Lenina’s relationship was tragic in every sense of the word. For John, who has only ever read Shakespearean romance, this is love at first sight. This beautiful white woman comes to his village on vacation. I don’t like the fact that her whiteness is made a trait that makes her more beautiful than the other girls, but it’s right there on page 78. To him, she is unique in all the world. He pretty much sees himself as Romeo. He had his heart broken by Kiakimé (Rosaline) and found Lenina in her place, his Juliet.

Personally, I hate that story, but I wasn’t raised on Shakespeare and tears. Moving on.

This meeting wasn’t very special for Lenina. This is how she reacts to seeing him the first time: “Lenina was smiling at him; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a really beautiful body” (Huxley 78). She experiences physical attraction similar to his, seeing as he, too, is white and handsome. But for her, who has never heard of love or marriage, he is just another attractive man to bed.

John wants to remain chaste until marriage like the goody two-shoes he is. I’m not knocking him for wanting that, but he is a goody two-shoes. Lenina, as we know, is the opposite of chaste and wants to have sex with John ASAP. Naturally, tensions rise and John is having a bad time. When Lenina undresses in front of him and throws herself at him when he says he wants to marry her, the bomb goes off. John calls her a whore and says he never wants to see her again.

And Lenina will never understand why this boy left her.

I will not say Lenina was entirely innocent. She made a lot of bad decisions, including misinterpreting and basically ignoring the idea of consent from John. But that is who she was trained to be. She’s practically a sex doll because that’s what society demands of her. In fact, she is constantly described as “pneumatic”, which means “full of air”. John wants a real relationship with emotions and a bond that can suffer and still remain strong. When Lenina is faced with suffering, she takes some soma and leaves.

To make matters worse, it doesn’t end with their fight.

The book ends with John attempting to live his life in solitude, paying for his sins (aka his sexual desire for Lenina). A man films him whipping himself and makes a 4D movie out of it, making John a sensation. A horde of people appear at his door and scream for the whip. In that horde is Lenina. She isn’t screaming with the rest of them. She “pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward” (175). She feels something. Something that makes her cry, and it isn’t the pure euphoria she’s used to. And these feelings are associated with John. We’ll never know what these feelings are since he then goes on to whip her in an angered frenzy, have sex with her, and hang himself out of shame. Still, she felt something. Maybe it was something real.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t.

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This cover shows John at the bottom, Lenina Crowne in the middle, and Mustapha Mond at the top as a looming background figure. I drew John’s skin darker than Lenina’s because I imagined that he would be tan from being outside more often than her. There’s also more sun in North America than in London, where Lenina and the other “civilized people” live. I have John in a crouching position. It is a bit primal, but that wasn’t the main point of having him in that pose. It puts him lower. Society sees him as odd and backwards. Although he is famous and receives many luxuries, he is still not part of the society that worships him. Had he remained undiscovered, the “civilized” would see him and his people as beneath them. The crouch is also feral, in a sense. To me, it seems like a potential attack position. John’s humanity and ability to feel unhappy is a focal point in the book. He is different because he does not want to be in a constant state of delirium. He is poised to strike. Out of the ordinary to the World State and yet entirely natural. The very purpose John’s character is made to serve.

Above him is Lenina. Of course, the hierarchy does dictate that she would be above him, but there’s more than that. John loves her. Is the love superficial? Absolutely, but that doesn’t matter to John. His conservative upbringing and romantic nature make him see Lenina as a higher being. He has romanticized her. Anyone who knows Lenina’s character knows that she isn’t particularly kind or caring. She’s quite stupid. John doesn’t see any of that. He just sees a beautiful woman that he wants to marry. Lenina has her arms outstretched toward the reader with her palms out. This position is supposed to show her offering herself. Not only does she do this multiple times throughout the book but, in my mind, she also represents this society attempting to sell itself to John and the reader. She is elegant, happy, and sexual, the ideals of this society, and sets her sights on John. She pursues him sexually and he repeatedly rebuffs her, much to her confusion. Still, the pleasures of this society attempt to seduce him through Lenina and he turns them both down.

Behind them both is a large, intimidating Mustapha Mond. Mond, as he is in the book, is behind everything. His position is literally titled “World Controller”. Though he is one of ten, it’s easy to say that he is behind most of what happens in the civilized world, which is why he behind Lenina more than John. His voice is also the voice they use to indoctrinate children and subdue them as adults. He controls the entire London system with his voice. This man is the puppet master, and hopefully his position makes that obvious.

I wanted the background to be white. It took a lot of work to make it pure white. If this is in the high-tech future, surely things would be minimalist. White, clean lines, and a lack of clutter are the first things that come to mind when thinking about the future. So I decided to make the background as clean as possible.

Most book covers I’ve seen focus on the story rather than the characters. The characters are so interesting to me, though. I felt like I had to make the cover about them. The characters, to me, are the most important part of the book. It’s not a good book without good characters, and the main characters of this book are captivating.

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https://coggle.it/diagram/Wo7pJxzm6QAB-6RR/t/sherrena-tarver-landlord/cd6182c47af0d3405b333e37504c4870452d08a964b14cd9ae17be274411d321

This infographic is a map of most of the major characters in the book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. As mentioned in my first microblog, I often found myself confused while reading this book. There are too many character to keep up with, each with their own unique relationships and stories. Just by looking at the map, it is easy to see my dilemma. These are just the most prominent figures and their families. I should probably explain the relationships, seeing how easy it is to be lost without them. The turquoise arms connect landlord and tenant. Sherrena and Quentin Tarver are the landlords of the story, and Tobin Charey owns a trailer park. The green lines connect co-workers or characters who meet and interact through work. The purple lines represent a parent-child relationship. Poorer families tend to have more children. This was certainly the case in the book. I attempted to keep track of the various fathers, but those who were no longer with the mothers are barely mentioned, forcing me to call them “unnamed” and give what little information I can find on them. In other cases, when there is no information to be found, I simply list the child and the parent they are reported to live with, leaving the other parent off of the chart. The pink/light red lines are boyfriends/girlfriends. They can be current or former partners. In the case of Lamar Richards and the mother of his children, her relationship with Lamar is not touched upon. She is only referred to as “Luke and Eddy’s mother” and is said to have left due to her addiction (Desmond 26). Orange lines mark familial relationships. The color is not specific to any relationship and the bond is specified in the description. The deep blue lines are marriages. Like the other romantic bond, it can be a current or a former marriage. There are very few of these on the map, so I am a little surprised that I gave this relationship its own color. Finally, the yellow lines signify roommates who are not related. These only came up on one occasion, but I felt it was important to Lamar’s character. It gives insight on his kind and caring personality. I tried to give facts about the personality of the characters in the descriptions. I also tried to put more thought into the relationships that just how they were connected. There’s always more to a family than the blood. Compare the Hinkinstons to Arleen’s family. The Hinkinstons are loud, lively, and are all about making the best of what they have. They care about each other, even when they prank each other. Arleen loves her family too. While she also tries to make the best of her situation, she only interacts with two of her children in the book: Jori and Jafaris. Her other children are briefly mentioned, and two of them are not even named. She is shown to be a caring mother, but has nowhere near the amount of life in her that the mothers in the Hinkinston family have. She has seen too much loss. These families are all large, but they are all so different. I think that was one of my greatest problems with this book: keeping track of what family had what dynamic. I really wish I had had this map while I was reading.

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