Joy Character Analysis

My father had entered seeking help. But his face was unshaven, his clothing disheveled, his name unfamiliar, his address not in a wealthy area. The hospital staff looked at him suspiciously, questioned whether his illness was even real, and basically told him to deal with it himself. Now my mother had to plan his funeral.

We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves—even our cruelty and crimes—as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood.

It was like being double agents or superheros—we had another identity off that campus. It was stressful. I felt like a chameleon. Justin did, too. If we wanted to fit in with our crew, we had to act a certain way. If we wanted to fit in with the kids at school, we had to act another way. And we wanted to fit in with both—very different—groups. But we wanted to do it on our own terms, by being “ourselves.” I was having a difficult time understanding what that meant, and I also felt the burden of representing something bigger than myself. There was this increasing need to wear the mask wherever I went, and the mask seemed to change based on the audience.

She thought of me as the bad apple in the class. One day, she flatly told me that it didn’t matter to her if I showed up because the class ran more smoothly when I wasn’t there. From that moment, I understood that [my teacher] and I had an unspoken agreement, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” pact that worked for both of us. She didn’t want me there disrupting, and I didn’t want to be there.

But even more than that, I found in hip-hop the sound of my generation talking to itself, working through the fears and anxieties and dreams—of wealth or power or revolution or success—we all shared. Music was a way to broadcast what was going on in our world to the rest of the world. It made us feel less alone in the madness of the era, less pushed to the margins.

The kids in my crew loved one another, but how long would we mourn if any one of us disappeared? I’d seen it happen already, kids leaving the hood in one way or another—killed, imprisoned, shipped off to distant relatives down south. The older kids would pour out a little liquor or leave a shrine on a corner under a graffiti mural, or they’d reminisce about the ones who were locked up. But then life went on. The struggle went on. Who really cared? Besides my mother, who would truly miss me if I went to jail?

Our birth names were irrelevant. Our past lives and our past accomplishments and failures didn’t matter. We were the same now. We were nothing. In fact, we were less than nothing. We were plebes.

Wes had his operation organized with the precision of a military unit or a division of a Fortune 500 company. He liked the feeling of holding down a corner with his boys. It was the place he felt the most in his element. An unbreakable bond united the crew—for many members, it was the only support system they had. It was family.