Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive
reviewdate:
Jun 30 2019
isn:
9780316421003
Tagged with poor people
Leah on the Offbeat
reviewdate:
Dec 19 2018
isn:
9780062643827
recommendation:
Ramona Blue
reviewdate:
Aug 18 2018
isn:
9780062418371
recommendation:
Girl in Translation
reviewdate:
Oct 26 2015
isn:
9781101187487
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My Best Everything
As I described it on Facebook:
It's a YA novel about making moonshine. The southern writing is A+, the story B+. The protag's love interest might make you swoon. I'd drop everything to be with him.
reviewdate:
Feb 23 2015
isn:
9780316324786
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Cup of Water Under My Bed, a
Hernández recounts childhood, coming-of-age, coming out, and coming to terms with her family. Like other child-of-immigrants stories, this one is about a child set up to leave her family behind.
reviewdate:
Jan 18 2015
isn:
978-0-8070-1448-6
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Painted Girls, the
Three impoverished sisters with a dead father and an absinthe-addicted mother try to survive in late 19th century France. One of the ways a girl could make money at the time was to be in the Opera ballet school and eventually perform with the ballet. Or pose for Degas.
reviewdate:
Jul 24 2013
isn:
978-1-59448-624-1
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Sisters, the
I made it well past the hundred page mark, thinking the book would eventually grow on me. The writing and story aren't bad; I just didn't care for the sisters, especially the younger one of the first generation.
reviewdate:
Jan 1 2013
isn:
978-0-312-54270-2
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Welfare Brat
I read a lot of autobiographies, but seldom does it occur to me to consider what a feat of memory and bravery it is to get down a rich portrait of one's life. Mary Childers does an admirable job of recalling her impoverished childhood and adolescence in the Bronx, and is pretty out there about what she endured, including her own shaming behaviors. I wonder if her telling the story in the present tense helped her with that? It kind of confused me, so I wish that even if the device helped her memory, that she'd switched it to past tense after the first draft.
Quotations:
He had always been a cruel and violent drunk, but when he dangled Lacey out of a window because she wasn't his kid, Mom ditched him. At least that's what she tells us. I'm glad to have a standard for where to draw the line on the kind of abuse to take from men. p.17
I wish my social studies teacher would verify what the old Irish guy told me and Paula about these crowded hills belonging to the Appalachian Mountains. But during the geography unit we only memorized and pierced with pushpins the map locations of natural resources and capitals in Africa, Asia and Central and South America, as if preparing for lifetimes of exile or plunder. p.127
reviewdate:
Aug 16 2009
isn:
978-1-58234-586-4
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free:
Hunger Games, the
The latest in the Julie Tozer recommended YA "horrible-alternate-world-scenario" series, The Hunger Games, is the most compelling so far. In this future world, the U.S. is divided into twelve districts, ruled by a very nasty bunch. This nasty bunch, referred to as the Capitol and headed by a President Snow, require each district to provide two "tribute," really a male and a female teenager chosen by a lottery stacked against the poor, to participate in a multi-week snuff television spectacle. The nation is forced to watch as the 24 teens fight to the death. As with reality tv, the proceedings are augmented with interviews and special features. There is also heavy betting.
reviewdate:
May 10 2009
isn:
978-0-439-02348-1