You Know Better a tale of Hip-Hop girl next door

Not a pretty sight, but a worthy read

By Margaret Bailey
Diversity Institute Fellow

07.29.02

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Tina McElroy Ansa, a southern born author, brings more insight into her southern roots in the book, You Know Better, the newest of her four novels.

In a continuing effort to bring attention to the issues children face today, Ansa creates a world of caring adults and spirits that don’t give up on providing guidance to a teenage girl in a world of downward spiraling morals.

The story is based in the mythical town of Mulberry, Ga., during a spring weekend. It is Peach Blossom Festival time. The central character is 18-year-old LaShawndra Pines, one of three disparate Pines family women whose lives are filled with pain. A self proclaimed “hoochie momma,” LaShawndra wants nothing more than to dance in music videos.

The book opens with Lily Paine Pines, the grandmother of LaShawndra, looking for her granddaughter after midnight. She rides up one street and down another, stopping here and there and anywhere she thinks LaShawndra might be hanging out.

LaShawndra has made up her mind to escape Mulberry to follow her dream. On the way, she experiences an eye opening adventure that becomes the vehicle for telling much of the story contained in this novel.

"Now, okay, I know nobody’s gonna believe this, ‘cause nobody don’t never believe what I say," LaShawndra is quoted saying as she begins to talk about the experience. “And I know some folks gon’ laugh at me, ‘cause they don’t think no more a’ me than I’m just a little small-town ho from Mulberry, Georgia. But this time I swear to God this is the truth. This is just what happened that day I was out by the side of Highway 90 trying to get a ride to Freaknik.”

It turns out that LaShawndra is describing a visit she had with the ghost of Miss Eliza Jane Dryer, a Mulberry resident who at one time was a “fast, fast, fast woman.” Dryer hung out in juke joints, drank like a soldier and was notorious for “shaking her butt” and “hanging on to first one man and then another.”

Dryer — or at least Dryer’s ghost — picks up a hitchhiking LaShawndra from the side of the road and turns what should have been a few hours ride to Atlanta into a long, slow, adventurous foray of listening, reasoning and coming to terms with oneself.

This deep, thought-provoking novel reaches into the soul and grips the heart, searing the thoughts of the reader as each character, with the help of a spirit, faces the hurt and finds what up to then was an illusive healing.

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