In Chap­ter Thir­ty-Nine of *If These Wings Could Fly*, the pro­tag­o­nist reflects on her lit­er­a­ture class focused on the por­tray­als of women in lit­er­a­ture. They study influ­en­tial authors such as Jane Austen, Alice Walk­er, Maya Angelou, and Sylvia Plath, with a par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on Mary Shelley’s *Franken­stein* and Woll­stonecraft’s *A Vin­di­ca­tion of the Rights of Woman*. The pro­tag­o­nist appre­ci­ates how women writ­ers rep­re­sent women as ful­ly dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters, con­trast­ing them with male writ­ers who often por­tray women mere­ly as vic­tims or arche­types.

As the class ends, Mrs. Riley, the teacher, encour­ages the pro­tag­o­nist to apply for an essay con­test, slid­ing a pink sheet across her desk. The pro­tag­o­nist shares her strug­gle with the prompts, express­ing her appre­hen­sion about not being able to express her thoughts effec­tive­ly. Mrs. Riley push­es her to per­se­vere, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of find­ing her voice as a bud­ding jour­nal­ist and high­light­ing the poten­tial recog­ni­tion that could come from win­ning.

While pon­der­ing over an essay about a crow in ancient folk­lore that drops peb­bles to raise the water lev­el for a drink—a metaphor for perseverance—the pro­tag­o­nist real­izes that although the con­test may not direct­ly lead to her goal of attend­ing NYU, each small effort could grad­u­al­ly bring her clos­er.

She con­tem­plates a more con­tro­ver­sial idea for the essay that might not sit well with the coun­cil, con­sist­ing of men who often resist changes or chal­lenges to the sta­tus quo. The pro­tag­o­nist recalls past expe­ri­ences, par­tic­u­lar­ly a humil­i­at­ing moment in class when a male teacher ridiculed a female vic­tim of harass­ment, which silenced her. Addi­tion­al­ly, she observes the unset­tling dynam­ics of how men inter­act with her moth­er at the din­er, reveal­ing a cul­ture where women’s voic­es and expe­ri­ences are min­i­mized.

Ulti­mate­ly, the pro­tag­o­nist grap­ples with the impli­ca­tions of speak­ing out in a town rigid­ly adher­ing to tra­di­tion­al norms. She con­tem­plates the poten­tial col­lapse of struc­tures upheld by fear and oppres­sion and under­stands the dan­ger­ous nature of her thoughts, real­iz­ing that some truths might dis­rupt the com­pla­cen­cy of her com­mu­ni­ty. Her reflec­tions under­score the ten­sion between per­son­al truth and soci­etal expec­ta­tions, sug­gest­ing that while change is nec­es­sary, it also pos­es sig­nif­i­cant risks.