Kevin Stefanye- Journal #2

When you first introduced the title “We Real Cool” to us, my first thought was that the poem was about drugs. I think that people who regularly use drugs and smoke cigarettes got into them to appear cool to other people. It’s cool nowadays to not care about your future, and we can see that in today’s pop culture, especially music, where we are told not to pursue a normal life, not to get a job in a cubicle, and not to conform, but I think that if nobody "conformed" and worked in cubicles, the world would not work as smoothly as it does. For example, a lot of songs (especially rap songs) encourage kids to smoke weed and drink alcohol, which can obviously hinder one’s future. When kids see their favorite rappers doing drugs and making it look cool, obviously they are going to try to emulate them.

            As it turns out, I was on the right track, but the poem was not directly about drugs. Once Ms. Brooks was halfway through reading her poem, that’s when I realized it was not really about drugs. I actually briefly thought it was about gang violence. When she got to the part that said, “We strike straight, We sing sin,” I thought it was about gangs, but I was wrong again. It was about kids skipping school, having some fun in the pool hall. It mentioned how they drank alcohol and stayed out late, but nothing about drugs. I think that the time period of this poem affected the content. If this poem were written today, it would be about drugs, alcohol, and gangs. Those kids probably wouldn’t be at the pool hall, but they’d be getting high behind the 7-11 and going to McDonalds for a chicken sandwich.

            I think she’s right though. Kids like that don’t get very far in life. I noticed that the kids who skipped school a lot in high school because they were too cool to care are now working full time minimum-wage jobs, and are having trouble going back to school. I also like the way she writes the poem. She’s absolutely right when she says, “We real cool,” because she says what one of those kids would actually say.