Book Update: Chapters 1-6

So far, I have read through chapter 6 of Picking Cotton. Jennifer Thompson is a college student at Elon College in Burlington, North Carolina. She is a straight-A student in college that rises well above the expectations in the classroom. She has many plans in life, which include graduating from Elon with a 4.0 GPA (Grade Point Average) and marrying her boyfriend. However, she wakes up to an intruder in her apartment one night. She is sexually assaulted and raped with a knife at her neck. However, she escaped and ran to her neighbors front door, where she was let in and away from the attacker. She was taken to the hospital and later on, the police department, where she was asked to put together her attacker on a black canvas. She is also brought in to the police station and asked to view six photographs of possible culprits. Then, a viewing is held to decide which of six men committed the crime, all from Jennifer's memory. The culprit she picked was a man by the name of Ronald Cotton, who was then taken to court and was proven guilty of first-degree rape, first-degree breaking and entering, and first-degree sexual assault. It then goes into Ronald's point-of-view where he described what happened the night the police came to search his mom's apartment. He was taken to the penitentiary where he eventually met a man named Bobby Poole, whom he thought looked very similar to the sketch of the suspect that Ron was locked up for. Ron persistently claimed that he didn't commit the crime to the police and everyone else. Through this point in the book, I feel very interested. I also feel grown and matured because of the adult-like nature of how the book is portrayed through each event. It is a very real situation that involves violence, revenge, and racism. It all interests me because it is a very real world situation that is non-fiction, which are my favorite readings. I am very anxious as well, to see how Jennifer continues to recover from this very traumatic experience.