ROAR Blog #5:Grace After Midnight

Courtney Patterson
October 27, 2009
ROAR Blog #5

Summary:
In the memoir Grace After Midnight by Felicia “Snoop” Pearson and David Ritz, Snoop is serving her time in jail. The jail has two nicknames that the inmates made up. The nicknames are: “The Cut” and “Grandma’s House,” so while in jail Snoop planned to keep to herself. Snoop’s plan worked at first, but overtime Snoop started to tell her story to the other inmates and the inmates also opened up to Snoop. One inmate’s story was that she was in love with a man that didn’t like children, but she had children from a previous marriage. The inmate decided to burn down her house with her children sleeping inside; because this would have been the only way the man would be hers. Another inmate was addicted to crack, but she didn’t have enough money to buy drugs. She tried to steal from her grandmother’s purse, but the plan went wrong when one of her grandmother’s friends had started scramming and trying to stop her. The inmate ended up killing her grandmother and her grandmother’s friends, because they were trying to stop her from getting her drugs. The rumor was the jail’s nickname: “Grandma’s House” came from this inmate’s crime.
While Snoop was in jail she started to misbehave, but Uncle had come to visit her and he to her to stop misbehaving. He wanted Snoop to server her time and move on with her life and misbehaving was not going to help her make a better life for herself. Snoop started to behave better and there was a change in her. Snoop wasn’t the only person who noticed that she was changing for the better; there was also her girlfriend, a police officer. All of Snoop’s hard work of becoming a better person was almost ruined when she found out that Uncle was gunned down. Snoop didn’t take this news very well and she was sent to the mental ward after she had a meltdown. As days turned into months, Snoop began to heal from the death of Uncle and one night after midnight, she felt a presence. She didn’t know what it was, but she explain what she felt to her godmother who started to work in the jail and her godmother called Snoop’s feeling grace. Grace after midnight.
Months after Snoop felt grace for the first time, she was free from jail and she told herself that she was would never return. Snoop was eighteen when she was release from and she went back home to her loving Mama who was always there for her. Snoop tried to continue her relationship with the police officer, but Snoop realized that love inside the cut, is not always love outside of the cut. Snoop’s new positive attitude was beginning to get her everything that she wanted. She got a job and she was very happy with the change in her. When Snoop got fired from her first job, she was mad. Snoop didn’t understand why she was getting fired, but she was getting fired because of her past criminal record. Two jobs later, Snoop felt that she should go back to selling drugs because that was the only thing she was good at.
While selling drugs Snoop had started to get more charges added to her record, because there was a cop that was determined to get her locked up. The cop even decided to plan drugs on Snoop, but the false accusations were dropped thanks to Snoop’s lawyer. Later on Snoop dodged another bullet when the plaintiff never showed up at court to press charges for Snoop treating her. Snoop went back to selling drugs, but on one night Snoop went to a club with a friend and her life had change from that moment. Snoop was introduced to Michael K. Williams who was an actor on the HBO’s hit show The Wire, and he told her to come down to the show’s set. When Snoop when down to the set, she did two screen tests over a period of two days and she got a part on the show. Snoop didn’t know what the show was about, but she soon found out when she was introduced to the cast and crew. Snoop decided to stop selling drugs and change her life after some of her fans were telling her how proud they were of her. Snoop like the feeling of doing positive things and having people look up. Felicia “Snoop” Pearson was becoming the great person that Mama, Pops, Uncle, Father, and her godmother all knew that she could be. It was “the Miracle of Love” or “Grace after Midnight” as Snoop calls it, that helped her on her journey called life.
(Summeriare from pg 111- 233)


Quote:
Snoop said: “I not only worked, I worked my a** off. I worked until I was sore from my head to my toe. Every muscle ached. Every good feeling I’d had went bad. Positive turned to negative. Sunshine turned to sh*t. All my eagerness, all my go-for-it energy, all my it’s-gonna-turn-out good energy turned rotten.”
(Pearson and Ritz 199).

Reaction:
My reaction is that the authors Pearson and Ritz’s style expresses the characters feelings in many details, without going off topic. The details allow the readers to understand the character and this helps the story, because the readers are able to relate to the characters. This quote is important to the story because it expresses Snoop’s feeling toward getting and keeping a job after she was release from jail. She explain how difficult it is and how the way she feels will help her decide to go back to selling drugs to the people in her community.