Shootout in the Sierra Desert
All that men want, Black girls in STEM turned to crime for survival by Naomi Tamara Cash.
A group of black girls traveling across the Sierra Desert west unto California in Ivy's barely working van from the 1970s, hoping to be a successful girl group focusing on science. Chelsee, Sierra, Anna, and Ivy want to go to UCLA in the fall to study biology, math, computer science, and engineering to improve the world, but will it happen? The girls stumble across an abandoned house across U.S. Route 66 in New Mexico. Ivy says, " Maybe we should stop and rest for the night." all agree: So the girls unpack their van to make a cozy home look girly, and Anna (the airheaded one of the group) says, "Guys, let's unpack and decorate the living room because this place looks trashy." When they enter the home, beer cans and spiders are everywhere, but Chelsee and Ivy say they can work with them. The kitchen is just as filthy, and the bathroom is a horror scene; the bedrooms are just as worst. But the girls wanted to rest for the night, and they thought, "What can go wrong?''. A truck full of redneck young white guys spots the abandoned house now with the girls inside, and they state that they will be back later to "take out the garbage."
Let's do a little rundown on the girls before we continue: They all met each other at a STEM for Black girls convention in Miami, Fl (where Ivy is from and attends college), and they hit it off.
Chelsee (aged 26) is a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tougaloo College, an HBCU in Mississippi, with loving parents and a house full of siblings; Chelsee was the eldest daughter taking care of five younger siblings. Her parents worked daily, so Chelsee could attend a Mississippi college and get out of the rural area they lived in. Her parents were pretty upset when she told them she was leaving for UCLA in California, but they wished her well.
Sierra (aged 20) is a Bachelor of Science focusing on Physics with a minor in Engineering; she stems from a middle-class black family from Georgia. Sierra attended Spelman College in Atlanta, GA. She is an Alpha Kappa Alpha member. Sierra is focusing on becoming the next Albert Einstein but as a black woman.
Anna(aged 19) is airhead regarding relationships and her surroundings but is a double major with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Africana Studies. Anna but unlike Sierra, comes from an upper-class black family whose careers are in entertainment. Anna attended Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas.
Ivy (aged 17) is the youngest of the group, a collective, Jack-Of-All-Trades, Double major who has yet to graduate with her bachelor of science in Computer Science specializing in Data Analytics. Ivy is also a dual enrollment student at two prestigious colleges in FL. Ivy is looking to graduate with her associate in Biology at a community college within the following year. Ivy didn't, however, grow up in a two-parent home. Ivy was raised by her daddy, barely seeing her maternal family member due to conflict between her father and his ex-wife's family. Ivy orchestrated this trip to research in Silicon Valley in hopes of working for Google.
Back to our story, Anna says we should decorate the living room of the abandoned house to make it more girly; Ivy asks why? So Anna responds, "Just to make it look like home." Chelsee and Sierra are busy making dinner in the kitchen while Ivy and Anna beautify the living room. Ivy goes to turn on the TV, but the antenna is crooked, so she says she'll go outside and try to fix it: As she walks out, she spots the truck down the street from the house, gawking at the home where she was, so she ran back inside to tell the girls when she comes back outside with the girls the truck is gone, so Chelsee says Ivy is seeing and imagining things again. Ivy is a machete-wielding, karate-kicking, razor-under-the-tongue-holding young girl; She takes pride in chopping up a motherfucker if they get too close to try and harm her sisters. After the situation outside, the girls sit down for dinner, play card games, and do what ordinary girls do at sleepovers.
