And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students

While he searches for childcare for Toya, Braxton is worried about Olivia: She’s on the run from the county, and they can apprehend her and put in the county’s shelter. He encourages her to return to foster care. She would like to attend Babson College in Massachusetts, to which she wants to apply for a scholarship to study entrepreneurship. She has written her college essay about the abuse she endured at the hands of her mother. In her essay, she writes, “Through it all, school has been my only safe haven” (53).   

Olivia loses her job at the clothing store because her 1977 Volkswagen breaks down, and she is late to work several days in a row. She tries to get a job as a graveyard-shift dispatcher at an aerospace company, but she has to take a job as a taxi dancer at a club in an industrial part of LA. She has to dance or talk with men, which she dislikes, and she doesn’t often get home until two o’clock in the morning. She is often late to class and late handing in work.

Her AP Government teacher, Scott Allen, asks students and their parents to sign a form acknowledging the rules of the class.