This is a true story but it doesn't read like one. Makes my childhood experiences seem pretty hum-drum. I really liked this memoir because it didn't play up some horrible, life changing experience and then blame everything afterward on that event. It was more about the general experience of growing up in a family with parents who refuse to provide for their children, and what the kids learned about survival. They were incredibly resourceful and creative. One of my favorite lines:
"A couple of weeks earlier, Miss Page had gotten the ax when the principal caught her toting a loaded rifle down the school hall. Miss Page said all she wanted to do was motivate her students to do their homework."
Also, I thought this passage was sort of the thesis statement of the book:
"One day Professor Fuchs asked if homelessness was the result of drug abuse and misguided entitlement programs, as the conservatives claimed, or did it occur, as the liberals argued, because of cuts in the social-service programs and the failure to create economic opportunity for the poor? Professor Fuchs called on me.
I hesitated. "Sometimes, I think, it's neither."
"Can you explain yourself?"
"I think that maybe sometimes people get the lives they want."
"Are you saying homeless people want to live on the street?" Professor Fuchs asked. "Are you saying they don't want warm beds and roofs over their heads?"
"Not exactly," I said. I was fumbling for words. "They do. But if some of them were willing to work hard and make compromises, they might not have ideal lives, but they could make ends meet."
Professor Fuchs walked around from behind her lectern. "what do you know abou the lives of the underpriviledged?" she asked. She was practically trembling with agitation. "What do you know about the hardships and obstacles that the underclas faces?"
The other students were staring at me.
"You have a point," I said."
That was a long excerpt. Anyway, my point is that this book is a first person perspective on poverty and it is really interesting.
