My Essay

Capri Christopherson   Jamal Wallace   Finding Forrester   William Forrester is a writer who, battling his own inner demons, has remained reclusive after   writing a Pulitzer Prize winning novel some forty odd years earlier. Living alone in a changing   neighborhood in the Bronx, he makes the acquaintance of Jamal, an intellectually gifted inner city kid,   who plays street basketball, loves to write, and does both well. A mentoring relationship springs   between the two. Under Forrester"s secret tutorship, Jamal blossoms.   Jamal Wallace is a basketball player who’s only sixteen but has a passion for writing and   reading. Although Jamal is intellectually gifted, he puts little effort into his school work to avoid   criticism his friends. With his bravery, Jamal gets dared to go into the apartment of “The   Window”, to his surprise, befriends the inhabitant. The man helps Jamal with his writing, in exchange   for Jamal keeping a secret: the man is William Forrester. Jamal learns more about himself and his   writing. His test scores give him a chance to attend an exclusive private school, Jamal gets the   chance to move from a sink school in the Bronx to a private academy where his real intellectual and   artistic talent will be nurtured along with his sporting skills, although everyone presumes he’s just   there to win games.   Jamal is a sixteen year old street smart boy growing up in South Bronx. He is African   American, with brown eyes and dark short hair. Like any other teenage Jamal just wants to fit   in, even if it means not showing his real interests or intelligence. He shows his interest and   talent for basketball because that’s what makes him fit in, well he hides in his room reading and   writing.   A professor named Crawford accuses Jamal of plagiarism because he incorporates the first   paragraph and title of an essay by Forrester into one of his papers. The essay had been written by Jamal   in Forrester"s apartment, and despite the fact that he was told to keep anything...