Cedric Jennings’s one and only friend throughout high school. Like Cedric, LaTisha is an outcast at Ballou, but this is mainly because she is overweight; while Cedric dreams of attending an Ivy League college, she is not interested in leaving Washington, D.C.; She attends the University of the District of Columbia, but drops out after her first year and ends up selling candy on the streets to raise money for a fundamentalist church she has joined. While LaTisha manages to stay away from drugs, violence, and teen pregnancy, she is a lost soul who does not know what to do with her life. At one point, when she and Cedric reconnect during his winter break from Brown, she realizes that she harbors romantic feelings for him, and even imagines herself finding God just so that she can be closer to Cedric. Unfortunately for her, while Cedric cares about LaTisha, he is too intensely focused on his college success to understand what she is going through, and he eventually leaves her behind, like everyone else from his childhood.
LaTisha Williams Quotes in A Hope in the Unseen
The A Hope in the Unseen quotes below are all either spoken by LaTisha Williams or refer to LaTisha Williams. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 11
Quotes
“You don’t understand anything, LaTisha. He’s saying you take care of yourself. All right?”
“It don’t matter how you look, Cedric—it’s what’s inside, the spirit in you. That’s what matters, that’s what matters!”
“Listen to me! He’s saying you don’t let yourself go! All right?! You make yourself look as good as you can! You hear me? What I’m telling you—you just don’t let yourself go!”
Related Characters:
Cedric Jennings (speaker), LaTisha Williams (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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LaTisha Williams Character Timeline in A Hope in the Unseen
The timeline below shows where the character LaTisha Williams appears in A Hope in the Unseen. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Something to Push Against
...a fight. They stare each other down until Phillip walks away. Cedric finds his friend LaTisha Williams—at five feet, two inches, and 250 pounds, she is a large girl, which makes...
(full context)
At the end of the school day, Cedric and LaTisha leave together to walk to the bus stop. It is 3:30 P.M., earlier than Cedric...
(full context)
Chapter 3: Rise and Shine
In his chemistry class, Cedric talks with his friends LaTisha and Tanya about plans for the future, and the girls are astounded when Cedric mentions...
(full context)
Chapter 6: The Pretender
...voice” on the phone and in the office. At home, Cedric talks to his friend LaTisha on the phone. They talk mainly about their friends from high school and what they...
(full context)
Chapter 11: Back Home
Cedric is eating out with LaTisha after taking her to the Sunday service at Scripture Cathedral, where she believes she was...
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They return to church that evening for a second service, and LaTisha stews in her sense of disappointment over her time with Cedric. He had mentioned that...
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Epilogue
...not had the same success after graduation: Phillip Atkins is still working in the mailroom; LaTisha has dropped out of college and joined a fundamentalist church, later quitting her job to...
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