Dinaw Mengestu's Home At Last

The word “home” is mentioned 138 times throughout Keeper N’ Me. It discusses foster homes, homelessness, Garnet’s many homes, other people’s homes and the home Garnet never thought he would find. There is a difference between a home and a house. The difference isn’t always clear to find, unlike the phrase “home is where the heart is” finding your home can be quite difficult if you don’t know where your heart lies. When Garnet joins Lonnie and his family you could say that his heart laid with them but eventually we learn that their home was not where he belonged no matter how invested his heart was in their family.

“…so, had rather leave a Place where I have no Prospect of advancing myself, than to continue here where I have not Friends to relive me.” (16) His only solution was to sell himself as an indentured servant in the American colonies in hopes of creating a new and better life for himself. His first of many misfortunes happened even before he set sail for America.

In the beginning of Elie’s experience, he gets the choice to abandon the ghetto and go with the family’s former maid to a safe shelter. He chose to stay because Elie would have been separated from his parents and little sister. This choice had a negative impact, but also a positive one. The negative side is that Elie’s family stayed in the ghettos, and then the concentration camps. At the time, no one could believe the rumors about the Nazis.

Being a watchmaker was not a good profession for someone who wanted to succeed in the colonies. And William Moraley was a watchmaker. Before he traveled to the colonies he was informed that being a watchmaker “would not do for any other Business, that being of little Service to the Americans” (16). From the very beginning Moraley was not set up to succeed because he was trained in a practice that was not

Many people may feel corrupt or threatened by the government and may want to disappear from the system. A young man managed to get away, however did not accomplish it on good terms. Chris McCandless was the name of the nonconformist. He wanted to go into the wild with no technology and nothing that would connect him with society. Not even his parents because he felt a sense of betrayal, his dad had another family with another woman that nobody knew about.

In the dramatic short story Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst a boy named Doodle and his brother encounter many obstacles similar to the brothers in the movie Simon Birch even though they come from starkly different family situations. Doodle and Simon were always the underdogs and wanted to be accepted. Doodle wasn’t accepted by his brother whereas Simon’s brother always looked at him like an equal. There brothers teach them many things like baseball and how to walk. Simon and Doodle are always happy and never sad or down.

“Freak and I get to be in the same classes. He made the Fair Gwen go in and see all these people at the school, because I wasn’t supposed to be in regular classes.” (Philbrick 75) Kevin tutored Max in his reading and that also helped him stay in his regular classes. Even once Kevin is gone, Max has the confidence to write down the story as a tribute to their friendship.

Loss of Humanity “I didn't know that this was the time and the place where I was leaving my mother and Tzipora forever”(29). In Elie Wiesel’s Night, this is where the book took a turn for Elie. He was still new to the concentration camp and he was being split up from his mother and sister forever. Loss of Humanity is what really changes Elie from a bright spirited boy, to a young kid that was sad almost all the time.

Everyone is taught very little history to avoid any sort of curiosity. Throughout Equalitys’ childhood, he is looked at very closely by his teachers for having too much curiosity and asking questions of the past. Later on in his life, the Council gives him the job as “Street Sweeper” to try and avoid any source of creative thought that may cause a ‘bigger problem’. The job he was given was of pure sinister motivation, because of his curiosity, his intelligence and the belief that his independence is evil. Growing up, Equality has wondered what is beyond what he has been told.

In Tony Went to the Bodega but He Didn’t Buy Anything, Martín Espada shows how culture shock can affect someone who is a minority. The poem starts off by telling us “Tony’s father left the family” (line 1) and immediately I felt sad for Tony, but then it goes on to say that he was a boy who was “nine years old who had to find work” (lines 4-5). Not only does Tony not have a father figure growing up, but due to his financial situation, he now must find a job despite being so young. This is not uncommon because race and socio-economic status are tied, so many minorities have to find jobs at younger, even illegal ages to support their families.

In Negocios, readers saw how the father could barely take care of himself and did not have the money to send or to bring the family to the US. Even though the father remarried to keep his citizenship

Jay-Roc didn 't feel like walking to catch up with his two male classmates. Those were his classmates at the time he attended this GED program called Youth Build. They headed to the corner store around the way. Not far from the house where they had to participate as community workers as part of the Youth Build

Them CRR: Question One Whites are “trapped in a history which they do not understand” because they cannot fully understand it without personally experiencing the hardships of slavery and or its enduring aftermath. Thus, they cannot be “released from it” because they never (and will never) understood the detrimental limitations of inequality and racism, even if in their hearts they sympathize (not empathize) with blacks. In Nathan McCall’s novel, Them, a white couple, Sean and Sandy, who were believed to be “firmly grounded in their social stands” lost touch with their “firm” beliefs when they moved to the Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the book it is said that after Chambers’ true identity is revealed, “He could neither read nor write… his manners were the manners of a slave”(Twain 166). As Chambers was growing up, he was neither offered, nor sought an education, or to learn proper manners. Even after he, and the rest of society learns who he truly is he is unable to overcome the damage done to him over the course of his life. This shows how the racial stigma of the time not only prevented blacks from seeking their own freedom, but prevented them from having the knowledge to interface with the society they had to change. “The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man 's parlor”(Twain 166) writes Twain.

He feared there would be no one to maintain the house and take care of the children if she was working. It also threatened his masculinity, but similar to the families in the museum, they had no choice. If he wanted his children to eat and have a home he had to allow Katie to work. Several other ideas also overlapped between the Tenement Museum and Jews without Money.