Leslie Harris is the writer; producer and director of the independent film Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. In this film, Chantel Mitchell is a young black female who resides and attends high school in Brooklyn, New York. She is smart-mouthed and equally as book smart, where she earns mostly A’s and B’s and plans on pursuing future education. Harris told the Washington Post that she saw the film “as a chance to undo stereotypes about the inner city and African American Teenage girls. It was a chance to give young women identity.”
Harris was raised with two older brothers in the inner city, and was the first person in her family to graduate from college, in result of both of her brothers dropping out after one year. Her perseverance to overcome the racial challenges and sexist stereotypes that faced her were unquestionably the motivation for the development of the main character, Chantel. This is exemplified throughout the entire film, where Chantel is determined, focused and striving to reach her goal to become a doctor, despite the odds. The unexpected plot twist in the end actually comes in result of Chantel becoming a statistic or Just Another girl on the I.R.T. when she discovers she is pregnant. In contrast to Harris’s life, a black woman who beat the odds, graduated college and became successful, Chantel on the other hand is doomed to remain in the inner city, raising a child while her hopes and dreams are positively set back a couple years.
New York Times 21 Feb. 1993: 17. New York Times. New York Times. Print
Washington Post 2 Apr. 1993: G-1-D-1. Print
Adolescence in 1990s Films 