Theresa Anderson a.k.a. Tee-Ay, the main character, gets a taste of the hip hop culture as she enters her new high school. The school is full of beat boxers, rappers, and break dancers. The students have their own lingo, and everyone in the school has some kind of nickname. Students aren't as interested in making good grades, as they are in partying, drinking, smoking, and gang banging.
Tone
The tone of the story varies a lot. It goes from funny, to sad, to intense, to happy all over again. I think the overall tone was inspirational. The book is intense when devon gets shot, and he is fighting life or death. This experience sent Theresa through many emotions, and made her very stressed. There were a lot of intense moments in this story, the big fight in the cafeteria of the school, and the moment when her best friend, Cee-saw, goes into labor. One example of how inspirational the story was when her best friend Devon gets shot in the neck,and he recovers successfully. Devon had missed the last three months of school, but was still valedictorian, and attended prom, graduated, and gave a inspirational speech to his peers.
Theme
The theme of this story is to always follow your dreams, no matter what you have to do to fulfill them. Theresa's main goal throughout the whole story was to succeed in every class, have above a 3.0 GPA, and to make a good enough score on the SATs to get into the University of Southern California. Theresa faces many issues that distract her from her goals, such as her best friend Cee-Saw getting pregnant and her newest friend, Devon, getting hurt and ending up in the hospital. Those are two issues she went through socially, she also had a lot of academic issues such as her world history teacher Mr. Wardin being extremely hard on her, and the many college applications she had to fill out, and send on time. Her parents are also a big burden on her, as shown throughout the story, they are very strict and don't