Summary

“Danvers vs. Lynn Classical” (65) begins four weeks into the school year as AJ Johnson was eating breakfast with her parents. The narration observes that she missed her brother TJ, who was at college. Mr. Johnson was reading the Boston Globe, and expressed irritation at the basketball player Larry Bird being given more attention and pay than black players because he was white. However, despite her father’s acknowledgement of these racial disparities, AJ thought that he was still invested in the stereotypical American Dream, whereas her mother seemed skeptical of it, as was evident in her disillusioned reaction to the cancellation of Sonny Spoon, a detective show featuring a black father-son duo, and her comparing it unfavorably to The Cosby Show. AJ herself still had not figured out America.

AJ’s father was an engineer and her mother was a radiologist...