Books

On my Thailand trip, I finished reading the book, A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. I found it to be a tremendous book which confirms my desire to help those less fortunate.
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The book follows Cedric Jennings, a poor black young man living with his single, working mother in the poor neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. He ends up making an incredible journey from abject poverty to the Ivy League.
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I think that the book presents many lessons. First, Cedric's mother, Barbara, undergoes absolutely heroic efforts to shield Cedric from the fate of most of his classmates, i.e. drugs, teen pregnancy, dropping out, etc. while they both live hand to mouth, face evictions, and rotate which obligation will be paid late each month.

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Second, it is clear that we live in a world of haves and have-nots. As much as many on the right want us to believe that in America everyone has a fair shot at succeeding in life and that all one has to do is work hard, it's just not true. Due only to the circumstances of our births, we run the race starting at different points and with different handicaps. Some start the marathon at mile 20, some at mile 10, some at mile 0, and some 10 miles before the start! At the same time, some are given Nike shoes, Gatorade, and running lessons while others run barefoot over sharp rocks. Telling these people to just run harder, will not allow them to compete.

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Affirmative action based on race takes a hit in this book as well. Cedric attends a summer program at MIT for minorities and finds himself the only poor kid there and struggled to compete. I think that the lesson here is that help should be based on income not race.

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I think that the book is an excellent one and found it both inspiring and depressing. It is an absolute inspiration that Cedric "made it" but depressing reading what he had to endure and the hundreds or thousands of peers he left behind to rot in the ghetto of Southeast D.C.

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Since the blog is new, I'll add quick thoughts about the 3 other recent books I've read...

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Nickel and Dimed is an interesting, entertaining, and sometimes depressing look at life at minimum wage, told by Barbara Ehrenreich. She spends a year or so moving from place to place taking the best entry level job she can find and tries to make ends meet. She chronicles her life as well as those of her co-workers. She clearly has an agenda but its instructive nonetheless. Once again, the "just work hard and you'll succeed" hypothesis is debunked. She has a good sense of humor, so the book isn't so preachy and is enjoyable to read for the most part.

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I became the last American, I think, to finally read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. Before that, I read the most recent of his 3 books, Teacher Man. Both are wonderfully written, witty, funny, poignant, and engaging. Both are worth reading. The former is his memoir of childhood growing up poor in Limerick, Ireland and the latter is about his 30-year career teaching English in New York City public schools.