Make connections with your own experiences.

In the second fraction of God Don’t Like Ugly, by Mary Monroe, the story line really started to pick up. While reading the section, from start to finish I began making connections with my own experiences. I consider myself like Annette when it comes to Rhoda getting a boy friend. Annette feels left out and kind of worthless now to Rhoda, as if she has to compete with Otis now for her attention. “Rhoda, you stood me up tonight to be with Otis. The night I was supposed to help you bathe your grandmother, you took off with him, too.” (P. 163). I see where Annette is coming from on this because when your friend gets a boy friend, it’s like your automatically dropped because he’s “the best thing that’s ever happen” to them and you now become less important. You’ll stop hanging out as much, not talk every day, and soon begin to fade apart. But it’s not only the part of losing them, but the feeling of hopelessness that you’ll be alone forever and never as happy as they seem. In Annette’s situation, though, she truly loved Rhoda; more than a friend, so that would be like finding out your crush never liked you and you were stuck in the friend zone forever. This clearly bothered her and she made no point in hiding her feelings from Rhoda by telling her exactly how she felt about their friendship.

Another connection I make in this section is with Rhoda. Once Annette finally tells her about Mr. Boatwright raping her, Rhoda goes ballistic. Annette had been hinting around it for some time, but never came flat out and said it until she became real close with Rhoda. Rhoda’s immediate response was “Well, he can’t keep doin’ what he’s doin’ to you! ...We can tell a teacher. Miss Tripp, the music teacher.” (P. 115). This was Rhoda’s best idea to try to help her best friend out of trouble. I feel as if I connect with her by helping people in tough predicaments. When my cousin was going through a depression she was really bad, but every day I checked up on her, made sure she was happy, and made sure she was eating because in this depression she was cutting along with starving herself. Trying to help people in such a shallow hole is a difficult process that takes many hours of work and cannot just be an overnight process. But Rhoda tried the best she could and was always there to listen to Annette and help her through the sexual abuse. The last page we read in our section was probably the highlight of the whole text, so far. While Annette was fighting with Mr. Boatwright one day, she finally had enough and blurted out, “You can like me all you want, but you can’t touch me again.” (P. 177). This was Annette’s most glorious moment. She finally had the courage to stand up to Mr. Boatwright, was ready to put this all in the past, and start her life from scratch. I give credit to Rhoda for Annette’s final outburst because she had encouraged her so much to tell someone or at least to make him stop, and Annette finally received to courage to do so. I assume that Rhoda’s feelings are going to be similar to mine as we both helped someone achieve a great accomplishment. Just as Annette broke away from Mr. Boatwright, my cousin broke away from cutting and her eating disorder. And the best feeling in the world is knowing you were the one to help that person achieve the end result. The fact that both Rhoda and I never gave up on our companion showed strength and how we never gave up.