![]() Tish and Fonny's relationship started out platonic, even though they eventually fall in love. ![]() And so we got to be, for each other, what the other missed. He didn't like his sisters and I didn't have any brothers. Or, maybe, and it's really the same thing-something else people don't want to know-I got to be his little sister and he got to be my big brother. People don't believe it about boys and girls that age-people don't believe much and I'm beginning to know why-but, then, we got to be friends. She will rely on all of these communities throughout her pregnancy if she wants to survive the ordeal of getting Fonny out of jail. This passage, found early in Beale Street, shows us the interlocking communities that Tish is a part of. Additionally, the community that Tish finds in the Tombs crosses ethnic lines-it is Puerto Rican and African American women alike who she interacts with. ![]() ![]() They refer to her as 'daughter,' and together they form a community of women whose men are imprisoned. The community of women of color that Tish meets in the Tombs, the jail where Fonny is being held, offers a relationship that verges on familial. I've never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the same of proud Puerto Ricans, who don't understand what's happened-no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example-and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail. ![]()
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