Read the poem, and answer these questions.


“I Was a Skinny Tomboy Kid” By Alma Luz Villanueva I was a skinny tomboy kid who walked down the streets with my fists clenched into tight balls. I knew all the roofs And back yard fences, I liked traveling that way sometimes not touching the sidewalks for blocks and blocks it made me feel victorious somehow over the streets. I liked to fly from roof to roof the gravel falling away beneath my feet, I liked the edge of almost not making it. And the freedom of riding my bike to the ocean and smelling it long before I could see it, and I traveled disguised as a boy (I thought) in an old army jacket carrying my fishing tackle to the piers, and bumming bait and a couple of cokes and catching crabs sometimes and selling them to some Chinese guys and I’d give the fish away, I didn’t like fish I just liked to fish— and I vowed to never grow up to be a woman and be helpless like my mother, but then I didn’t realize the kind of guts it often took for her to just keep standing where she was. I grew like a thin, stubborn weed watering myself whatever way I could believing in my own myth transforming my reality and creating a legendary/self every once in a while late at night in the deep darkness of my sleep I wake with a tenseness in my arms and I follow it from my elbow to my wrist and realize my fists are tightly clenched and the streets come grinning and I forget who I’m protecting and I coil up in a self-mothering fashion and tell myself it’s o.k.


1. The speaker mentions “believing in my own myth,” “transforming my reality,” and “creating a legendary self.” In your opinion, what might she mean by each of these phrases?

2. Does the speaker’s childhood behavior seem familiar to you, or does it seem unusual? Explain your answer.

3. Why might the speaker have felt the need to disguise herself when she went fishing? Do you think girls would need this disguise today Explain.

Plsss help, I WILL GIVE OUT BRAINLIEST ANSWERS