A Message about Shebaad and a Synopsis of Star Cocooned in MediocrityShebaad was born on October 7, 1964 on the island of Galveston. She grew up an hours drive away in Port Arthur, a small Texas city bordering the Gulf of Mexico that she claims justi... Read more

A Message about Shebaad and a Synopsis of Star Cocooned in MediocrityShebaad was born on October 7, 1964 on the island of Galveston. She grew up an hours drive away in Port Arthur, a small Texas city bordering the Gulf of Mexico that she claims justifiably had a large ego back in the day, freely boasting We Oil the World on its city letterheads.The safety of growing up in a small town is the greatest gift parents can offer children, Shebaad asserts.She soon reflects on the positives and negatives of being in a place where everybody knew you. Even if an adult didn't recognize you, they would ask, Girl, who your people? Soon, they'd link me to my older siblings or my parents or grandparents.The drawback, she says, was that there was very little economic opportunities available to the young people reaching adulthood by the time she graduated from Lincoln High School in 1983. Lured by a similar hope for economic advancement as that which led her grandfather to leave Louisiana and strike out for the oil fields of Southeast Texas, Shebaad set out for Houston soon after graduating from high school. Consistent with SCIM, Shebaad enrolled at the University of Houston immediately upon leaving Port Arthur. However, her initial attempt at college life was unsuccessful, as she acknowledges having spent too much time partying. To support herself, she found a job working as a salesperson at a regional department store called Joske's. Also similar to the novel, she did land a job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she worked as a clerk. However, it was the transition to the Houston Police Department that truly allowed her the economic stability to return to college. During her 13 year tenure working night shift at the HPD, Shebaad earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from U of H, double majoring in Journalism and Radio-Televison; and minoring in African American Studies. She returned to UH and earned her teaching certification in English Language Arts and Reading. At the time of novel's release, Shebaad was in her seventh year of teaching high school English. It is because of her commitment to her students that the novel even began to form.Knowing that we'd typically have the sophomores write personal narratives as their first assignment, I decided to be proactive and write one of my own to use as a model for my students, Shebaad says. The students were so receptive when I read the nine-page narrative aloud to them during that first week of school. I was surprisingly encouraged by their reactions to the text. Slowly throughout the school year, I expanded on the narrative . . . adding a little here and there until a novel actually began to take shape — pulling from my Southeast Texas roots, SCIM took on a Creole-African-Choctaw flavoring all its own.Many of the events the truly occurred in Shebaad's young life were pulled into Star Cocooned in Mediocrity. However, the author cautions that her text should not be deemed an autobiography in any way, as she took too many liberties — changing events or even adding others that may not have even happened. Consistent with the young Shebaad, the narrator Kimberly starts out as basically a quiet child but is molded by environmental constrictors into a sheep in wolf's clothing, as the author posits. Kimberly's foil, the title character Estherqueenie, does not make such a childhood transformation despite the fact that life confronts her with others in her life that will emotionally and even physically abuse her.The true transformations involve not merely the fact that both characters develop their own sense of worth, tossing off the timidity of their early days and becoming well-adjusted young women, but also the fact that Kimberly comes to recognize her spiritual self. In contrast to Estherqueenie who has religion forced upon her, the narrator's epiphany involves an appreciation for what true Christianity entails by studying both God, the godly, and the godly. The author intentionally injects the quotation marks to denote those who profess to be holy but inwardly are ravening wolves. As a result of Kimberly's having taken a passive look at the three realms from her bird's eye vantage point, she inevitably develops a synthesis of an earthly and heavenly world view that is based on the wholesomeness of the elders.Chapter by Chapter Profile of Star Cocooned in MediocrityChapter One We Just Were, p.1The reader first meets the narrator but is not given her name. The narrator explains that she and Estherqueenie were the best of friends during their junior high days at Woodrow Wilson. She does, however, point out that she does not remember how they became friends. The narrator stresses that this is odd because she does remember meeting every other friend she has ever had, including the feisty Lydia Jones. This friendship started as a result of Lydia challenging the narrator to a fight during their third grade year. This encounter then became the narrator's first mem Less