Friends: A Love Story Read Online Free PDF

things that could hurt your feelings if you took it that way. “It looks like a stick in the ground,” she said about the Washington Monument.
    One night they took us to the Kennedy Center to see a play, Of Mice and Men, starring James Earl Jones. I was touched and moved by the play, and James Earl Jones, who played his character so beautifully. It was just great! And when he, as the character Lenny, got shot on that stage, I cried. The theater had emptied, the people were gone and I was just sitting there, boo-hooing. “How can these people just leave?” It was like a spark had gone off inside me. If I could make people feel as passionately as I feel right now, I thought, that would be a wonderful thing!
    After that I started participating in the drama society atschool, if you want to call it that—we didn’t really do a play or anything. When I was a senior, the society held an evening of monologues. I remember doing one from A Raisin in the Sun of Mama talking to Benita.
    â€¦when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they gone and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so!
    I put on my great-grandmother’s blue-and-white dress, stuffed the bosom full of paper and made up my hair and face to look old. I remember people applauded and received my performance well. It touched them. I thought, Oh, maybe I’m good at this! I’d perform at church in the talent contest, I’d get with Kenny and we’d do a scene from a play together, and we had arts nights at Upward Bound—that kind of thing. I’d read Langston Hughes poems: “Madam and the Rent Man,” “Madam and the Phone Bill,” “Madam and the Minister.”
    At the library I found a recording of Ruby Dee reciting the poetry of Langston Hughes. You know, Ruby Dee is good—she can do poems! So I just copied her and was good at copying her. I really connected with the sentiment of one poem in particular that she did entitled “Final Call.” It was powerful and had a great rhythm.
    I performed “Final Call” at a CME Church conference one time. I was so nervous after my recitation that my knees buckled. But then people started applauding. I received a standing ovation from the crowd of more than one thousand people. Experiencing the rush of applause from so many people almost blew me backward—it made me feel good. Later I entered and won a oratorical contest put on by Optimist International. Experiences like these made me feel validated and assured andconfident in my abilities. I had a sense that God had given me a gift. The works of these great black artists that I read and performed heightened the sense of excellence my mother had implanted in my spirit. They also connected me to the rich cultural legacy of African-Americans, and made me aware of black people’s strength, struggles and accomplishments.
    At the beginning of my senior year, my mother received a letter on a yellow legal sheet of paper from Mr. Langhorne, my old Upward Bound director. He had gone on in the world—he was in the army and had been stationed elsewhere—and hadn’t been in contact. But he sent my mother a letter telling her where to have me apply to college.
    Dear Betty, I know it’s time for Angela to start applying for college. Have her apply to the University of Virginia, University of Miami, Harvard, Yale, University of California at Berkeley…
    Until then, I had been thinking about going to Howard, since it was a very prestigious black institution and I had visited D.C. before. Then somebody suggested that I apply to Mount Holyoke, an all-girls’ school in Massachusetts.
    I didn’t know what other schools to apply to. I’d been to Florida A & M University;