Warriors Don't Cry

This weekend I devoured what is now my favorite book Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals. In this book, Melba Patillo Beals recounts her scorching experience of integrating into Little Rock High School in Arkansas during the late 1950s. What I adored about this book is that Melba Patillo Beals presents this book more like a story. Technically, it is characterized as a memoir, and most memoirs that I have read bear an essay aspect to it, where the author mulls over this experience. But she reads this as a story. She provides very little reflection, but when she does, it is brief but as well very powerful. Because it was read like a story, I found it fast paced as easier to read; I whizzed through this book as a result. Another thing I liked about this story was the whole plot. It was glutted with suspense because integrating was dangerous. The threat of being attacked by racist whites against integration always loomed high. The plot was also ornamented with a huge sense of misfortune happening to the character. Her friends rejected her because she was integrating to a white school and pulling a dangerous stunt and at school hateful words and bad treatment bashed her. This misfortune aroused an interest in the book in me, because as the character was afflicted with a lot of trouble, and I wanted to see what she did to deal with this trouble. Apart from amusing me, the book also preached a lesson. People meted out bad things to Melba always; a man attempted to rape her, acid was hurled at her eyes, and she was pelted with hateful words. But she never dared to cry. Her diary entries exhibited feelings of sadness, but she never cried and kept her head high and fought like a warrior. That lesson is something that I as well as others can emulate in hardships; to keep on persevering and fight; never to be weak and cry.