Carolyn Ferrell's "Proper Library" is centered around an inner city, the story follows Lorrie, a homosexual teenager trying to survive his peers and his lifestyle. Lorrie skips class often to be with Rakeem, the boy he secretly lusts for.
This story Lorrie attempts to help his relatives survive poverty through education. On page 706 he teaches his brothers "math 4." Lorrie states "I never hate anybody," and "I keep moving, it's the way I learned keep moving." This shows the reader that Lorrie has plenty enemies including a white girl that calls him "faggot" on the bus, but he still pushes through life.
This story has characters that are pulling Lorrie in every direction. Rakeem wants Lorrie to skip school, his mom wants him to study hard, the street lives of gangs trying to target him as a member or a victim. Mrs. Gabrini's positive reinforcement in school helps Lorrie keep focus. He is influenced everywhere he goes.
Carolyn Ferrell wrote this piece capturing many different dimensions of a character's life, complicated many times over because of mixed sexual feelings, trouble in school, and having everything falling around him as he tries to climb out of his life's problems. Ferrrel felt alienated in her younger years growing up in Brooklyn, her own childhood seeps through in her character's own alienation. In the scene that shows Rakeem getting out of a beating by threatening a gang by saying "I have Aids," stays consistent with her reputation of using AIDS as subject matter in many if her writings.
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