On the Come Up

Bri is a 16-year-old Black high school student who lives in Garden Heights. Bri is from a single-parent family, and her father was murdered when she was only four years old. She has one older brother, and she lived with her grandparents for most of her childhood when her mother’s drug addiction made her incapable of being a parent for many years.

Bri has dreamed of being a rapper “since [she] was ten” (15), but she’s “never really put [her]self out there with it” (15). Her friends and family tell her that she has skills, but music is deeply personal for her, so she hesitates to bare her soul to the world with her songs. Her father was an underground rap legend, and Bri is determined to “make a name for [her]self” (16).

Despite the support of her family and friends, Bri feels invisible at her school because “at Midtown [...] if you’re not exceptional, you’re a nobody” (67). Bri doesn’t feel exceptional, especially when it comes to her grades or her discipline record. Bri acknowledges that she has a temper and a long track record of getting in trouble. She has been told that she is “stubborn like [her] daddy, smart-mouthed like [her] daddy, and hotheaded like [her] daddy” (23), and she is frequently sent to the principal’s office and suspended over small things like rolling her eyes or talking back to teachers.