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Essay on Miss Black America
Angela Davis Brown’s father is a magician. But he’s not the one that made her mother disappear. These are the most facts perhaps most central and most intriguing in Veronica Chamber’s life-inspired novel, Miss Black America. Angela’s mother, Melanie, was a beautiful woman who cleaned a bank for a living, but she felt that she was made for more than that. Nicknamed “Miss Black America” and “Miss Dark & Lovely” by her husband, she is proud of her looks and meticulous about her beauty. (Tavis Smiley)
Teddo, her husband is a magician, a charming man capable of many illusions. But Melanie is the one that vanishes one day while Angela is in the sixth grade. Melanie never says goodbye, and Angela never saw this particular “vanishing act” coming. Melanie left her daughter nothing more than her wedding picture and her straightening comb.
t first no one would tell Angela where her mother was. But what Angela might have suspected is true. Miss Black America moved to Hollywood, California, to pursue her dreams that a woman with a child could not really follow.
Life with The Amazing Teddo means not only life without a mommy to take Angela to school, and braid her hair, or buy her dresses and presents. Life with Teddo also means dealing with Teddo’s disdain and resentment of Melanie, dealing with his consuming need for fame and fortune of his own, changing schools as often as she changes clothing, and learning to take care of herself. Teddo is a talented magician, but he is never able to pull food, money or new clothes out of thin air.
A perceptive and observant child, Angela is also constantly understanding new things about life (it being complicated, painful, and often unfair) and about accepting loss. She also learns perhaps more than she wants to know about her father.........
