Daneesha and Jaekwon

			Daneesha and Jaekwon: An American Love Story
Skip to:	Introduction		Inspiration	Timeline
Intro		"What is an American Love Story?" see Global Love Stories
Inspiration		What is American? When something is referred to as American, it generally means European- American. So, I decided my character would not be European-American. African Americans are still the second largest minority group, (as of 2004) plus I'd already written my Hispanic story (Rio's Revenge). Choosing black characters considerably narrowed my focus. So then, my question became what is black love like in America? What would be an average story there? Instinctively, I said we're not going to simply take two people and paint their faces black. This must be a true-ish story. It must be reflective of the community. So what's going on in our world? Depression, gang violence, under employment, unemployment, biased stereotypes, Baby mama drama, high arrest rate. . . . .and Daneesha and Jaekwon were born. I thought about them for a couple of days, carried them around with me in my head. And one day, I picked up a notebook, and began writing. The video trailer that I made will introduce you to their pasts. But the story you will see/read begins at the club where they meet. Because I happen to live in Pittsburgh, and I want the story to reflect a real/ normal life, I decided to place their story in Pittsburgh, that way, I don't have to fake much of the story at all. And I’m proud of the fact that I actually made Pittsburgh sound like a cool place to be. Originally, I wanted an Arabic Love Story and the American Love Story to be sold together - two very different and very similar love stories And then I thought, well, what about the rest of the world. I'm going to add a South American Love Story, and a Chinese Love story. But then, I couldn't think of anything particularly different about love in China or South America. And I have very little generative knowledge about the Chinese culture, which isn’t my culture, so how authentic could I make that? I dropped that section and moved with Daneesha and Jaekwon.
Plot Summary		Act I: Daneesha and Jaekwon meet at a club. Daneesha is dragged there by her girlf friends Angela (hispanic) and Shree (African-American divorcee with three children). They feel instant attraction, but Daneesha hesitates, she cannot trust him, and pushes him off, puts limits on their relationship and feigns disintrest Act II: Daneesha admits her weakness and lets Jaekwon into her heart and her life, but she doesn’t trust him and when he moves in she finds reasons to push him away, to regain her safe independence. Act III: Daneesha ends up pregnant, making her relationship with Jaekwon a permanent factor in her life. Jaekwon proposes, names the baby.
Timeline		Daneesha and Jaekwon notes from 2005 I began to work on Daneesha and Jaekwon 'cause I had some important things to say, some images about society that I wanted to put out. Daneesha and Jaekwon isn't great. It's just a first attempt. My first uphill battle fight. An American Love Story emphasizes the fact that these are Americans. They are just like you and me. Just because their faces are black doesn't mean you aren't like them. And African is not a subdivision of American. They are one in the same. They are Americans. It began in He Says/She Says form. I get into my characters heads, and write about what each person is thinking and feeling in first person. And although there is a spacial and obvious division between the parts, this dual first person mode that I call He Says/She says may be difficult to read. It is not what people are used to, plus, media says that black folk, particularly the ones this book is aimed at, don't read. So I've begun thinking of it as a movie. What I wrote it in December 2004, I started writing it in screenplay form. By this time, most of it ended up being only general narration in 1st person anyway. But what would I loose by cutting out a lot of their internal monologues? I don't know yet. Nothing is set in stone. The story isn't even finished. And before I get to that, I have to fix Rio, send it out, and redo my novel. So who knows? Maybe I'll even let "Gifted" take over. 2007 Following this period, I tried to get back into Rio, but felt torn because of the language issues, so I decided to focus on sending out my novel to the publishers. That was done in the fall 2006 when I went back to school full-time, and the full-time class schedule plus part-time work at the day care permitted no time to get back to this project. I didn’t start again until the winter of 2007, after I graduated with my BA in Humanities. After looking at it, I found myself torn again, for one thing, it’s hardly authentic because it’s not really based on personal experience at all. It’s more based on contemporary African-American fiction, and television ideas. So it seems somewhat cheaper than something created from my own experience. Because of this, I don’t really feel pulled to work on it, even though the screenplay is close to finished.

Soundrack		(On Trailer-) “Oh Daddy” by Christina Millian “Waiting for Love” by 3T
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View Trailer		Daneesha and Jaekwon Trailer- 2005 Made with Sim2 Footage Featured Audio- “Oh Daddy” by Christina Millian (Daneesha) “Waiting for Love” by 3T (Jaekwon)