Haley Newlin > Recent Status Updates

Mazelle tells an interviewer that her childhood ended when she was 9 bc of what happened to Aunt Ruby and bc she realized producers thought of her as “a darky” (making her more and more like a minstrel performer)

It’s not enough to change Mazelle’s hair. Now Mr. Lorenzo wants her to work with a white dialect coach to sound more like what he thinks Black people should sound like in films and less like a “prep school student.”

Mr. Lorenzo creates stereotypical and racist presentation of Mazelle and probably other Black actors. He wants her hair messy, “nappy.” Her mother makes it look intentionally neglected. Mazelle is humiliated by it

Mr. Norman thinks Scout (the dog) would make it in films/Hollywood but not Mazelle bc she’s Black

At just 9 years old, Mazelle becomes the key source of income for her family and “learned to spot white men who hated Negroes and white men who loved to do business with Negroes.”

White-owned chain bookstores were waging war on Black bookstores, exploiting the industry, and underselling Black books, quickly abolishing their independent competitors

Favorite part of this book so far is Maya Angelou coming up behind a stressed bookseller and asking “Do you know any sweet words?”

“Some people only exist to be cruel.”

Mara lives in survival mode

“I have no choice but to have faith through anything and everything. To believe I have what it takes to at least live to see another day.”

This one moment of panic and claustrophobia captures what it’s like to read a Laurel Hightower book 😄

“social media can never capture the full story. There are always things we have to pull back.”

I really relate to Mara’s reflections on the friends she’s had, how she’s concealed parts of herself to fit in or be accepted, being the “other”

“I’ve always hated following a group. Solitude has come easier to me…I was a fixture on the outer edge of friend circles—smiling when they laughed, nodding when they gossiped, always the extra. None of those friends stuck. Something was always off.”

“there are little horrors in this competition peeking through the spectacle, which have altered me to true danger.”

I love the blurred line between reality and spectacle

“Money’s funny, isn’t it? It makes you rewire. Reprioritize. Rebrand your intentions.”

The competition is so much about exposure
“Every single one of us has something to hide.”

“This is what happens when society abandons its most feeble but forgets to break their resolve.”

SMILE FOR THE SCREEN

Competition waiver is concerning

“I refused to rationalize that I should be carrying so much at this stage in my journey. This life, these cards—they weren’t mine to choose.”

Competition host, horror director Jack Stanley, reminds me of Vincent (played by Geoffrey Rush) in the 1999 House on Haunted Hill remake

“… part of me is chasing pure freedom: the proof that I don’t need anyone to hold me up. That I can win on my own, regardless of who’s there for me.”

Why Mara wants to enter the contest

Mara is putting so much on winning the contest - a brighter, more colorful, adventurous life away from where she grew up (Houston)

Mara reminds me of Deen in the Fear Street films

Disillusioned at a young age

J Edgar Hoover of the FBI launched surveillance of Black bookstores

President Kennedy doesn’t acknowledge the extreme violence against the black community in Birmingham, Alabama, including the bombing of a church that killed 6 children

David Ruggles was the first “officer” of the Underground Railroad and helped over 600 Africans escape slavery. Later, he opened the first black-owned bookstore which was subject to mob attacks

“Black bookstores have always been at the center of Black resistance.”

“So great is southern hate and prejudice”

Men in the South committing crimes like robbery while wearing blackface. Black men then accused and killed for the crimes

“The white man’s god is his dollar.”