Ruth And Homelessness

a. Reading James McBride’s novel brought on a plethora of emotions. I sometimes forget just how trying life can be for “minorities.” For Ruth I mostly felt empathy and sadness. During her childhood, the white kids were mean to her, her father molested her and showed absolutely no respect for her mother, teen pregnancy/abortion, and then she finds the courage to leave where she finds true love not once, but twice only to have that ripped away from her. Ruth’s life is one struggle after another.

Ruth led a life broken in two. Her later life consists of the large family she creates with the two men she marries, and her awkwardness of living between two racial cultures. She kept her earlier life a secret from her children, for she did not wish to revisit her past by explaining her precedent years. Once he uncovered Ruth 's earlier life, James could define his identity by the truth of Ruth 's pain, through the relations she left behind and then by the experiences James endured within the family she created. As her son, James could not truly understand himself until he uncovered the truth within the halves of his mother 's life, thus completing the mold of his own

James grew up in a chaotic setting in which survival of the fittest was a tactic he needed to use every day. He grew up with eleven other children in his household, leaving him to fend for and take care of himself. Ruth taught her children, James specifically to carry themselves with measures of high dignity and with the strive or will power to succeed. Looking back on his life, James owes his success to his mother.

Mrs. Mcbride was very successful in raising her children “color blind”. There were many benefits to her children in the long-run of her raising her children the way she did. She did not reveal her past to them because she wanted them to have a sense of of their own as a person and not be defined by her past. Since she didn't tell them about her past, they had no other choice but to find out who they were as their own individuals, and have a mind of their own in which today all twelve children have reached their very own success. Ruth and the results that she had with her children was from the way that she raised her children. She was not a dictator and gave her children love. She taught them lessons which they would need for life. She also

To begin, I will be discussing money, one of the many themes in “The Living is Easy” by Dorothy West. This book is about a woman named Cleo, who grew up in an upper-class African American family. Cleo was always into the business world ever since she was a little girl. She moved to Boston and married Bart Judson also known as “The black banana king.” They have one daughter named Judy. Bart owned business that he transported bananas. He was a very productive and wealthy man, but when things took a turn for the worst, he had lost all his money leaving Cleo with the remains of it. Their marriage was solely based on money, while Cleo sisters, Charity, Lily, and Serena had it differently. They loved their husbands, so much that money was not a necessary object, and no money was involved. The sisters had visited Cleo without their spouses for most of the book making their mindsets change as well as their attitudes towards their husbands. This mindset has shown the many problems with Bart Judson’s money and revealed how careless the characters can be.

Some lessons that we could learn from Longtown are that every race is equal to the country and that we should have interracial marriages. A man named James Clemens was a freed slave from Virginia who became a rich and wealthy farmer. Now the way we are living is becoming endangered and being lost in Longtown because Longtown people are dying, and whites are moving in and buying their property. James Clemens great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson is working to save his family’s way of life. Connor Keiser (age 22) said that his childhood is filled with memories with cousins of all races. Connor had said that “We were the usual Longtown family. We all looked different, and we were taught that color didn’t matter.” In the 1880’s

James McBride’s search for his racial identity intensified during adolescence. While his older siblings were earning college degrees, McBride out of all his siblings rebelled the most. He ended up on a street corner, hanging out with punks and stealing. His mother sent him to his sister, Jackie’s house. James was hanging out with people who had nothing better to do with their time While In their company, something finally clicked and he realized the street corner was a dead end. James suffered while searching for his identity. During his adolescence, he went through a period of uncertainty and anxiety it turned self-destructive. Although Ruth dealt with her negative memories of her past experience, she overcame it and was able to become a strong individual. Ruth believed that her own children should experience more freedom that she did. However, “she accorded with her parents' belief in the value of hard work, which she passed on to her children by reinforcement and example.” (98) She encouraged her children to embrace discipline and diligence from a young age. When James realized this about this mother he decided to approach his identity issue another way. James returned to high school, went on to college, and became a journalist.

Ruth McBride Jordan: Ruth is the central figure within this memoir and is the tough Jewish mother of James and eleven other children. Growing up as a Polish Jewish immigrant, Ruth gives up and ditches her own tradition to embrace the love she has for her black husband, Dennis McBride. Being Ruth’s inspiration, Dennis taught her to live and lead a non secular life, become apart of the Christian community , and that her family was her first priority no matter what. Ruth is committed to her faith and intelligent and never dwells upon her past. She mentors all twelve of her kids on the importances, that being God, work, and school.

While Ruth and her family moved from place to place they attracted a lot of attention. People noticed them because they were poor and Jewish. The fact Ruth’s mother was handicapped made their

Both parents preached to their children about the importance of self-reliance, pride, and self-respect, values directly contradicting the “customary” values that African Americans were expected to assume (Evers-Williams, Marable, 30). As a Child Medgar was told how, his great-grandfather had killed two white men in a dispute an had managed to avoid white retaliation by escaping from town (Evers-Williams, Marable, 30) Myrlie Evers-Williams now relates James Evers would constantly preach to his children: “My family will be able to walk on the sidewalk. Whites will treat them with dignity. They will be able to register to vote.”

James and His Mother had two very different experiences in public school. Ruth was racially divided in her schooling and James went to a school that was racially diverse.”In Suffolk, they had a white folks’ school and a black folks’ school and a jewish school.” (McBride 79). Some people didn’t consider the jewish school to be an actual school. When Ruth was finding a school for her children, she would search for a primarily jewish public school. “We grew accustomed of being the only black, or ‘Negro’ in school and were standout students, neat and well-mannered, despite the racist attitudes of many of our teachers” (McBride 89). James did not feel like he did not belong in the school he was in. “The Jewish school didn’t really count with the

Rubin is a father to two kids, Theodora and Raheem. After his prison stint, he had set his responsibilities on things other than alcohol and cheap women. His Father, Lloyd Carter, was a great man in the community. He was an entrepreneur and owned many small businesses throughout Rubin’s childhood. He was also a preacher at a local Baptist church. Rubin’s father taught him responsibility and pride in order to demolish the racial stereotype of the black man from that era. This is the thing his father had said that was stuck in Rubin’s head for the rest of his life.

The young man’s grandfather was a wise man who dispenses words of wisdom to his son to aid him in his survival. His last words are a revelation of the humble life that he has lived. They point towards the inequality between Blacks and Whites and state that the only way to survive is to pretend to be agreeable to social injustices and the status quo but secretly work for change (Ellison,

In the story there was a little boy named roger he was a homeless little boy and he was saw a lady named Luella bates Washington jones and she was getting off work and she walked passed roger and he followed her and he tried to snatch her purse and run but she caught him before he could get away. She was trying to be nice and polite to him because he didn’t have no place to go or nothing he had no food and no home but what she did was from the kindness of her heart and she took him in and fed him and cleaned him up. He was scared that she was going to call the police on him but she said she wasn’t going to do that. The reason he tried to take her purse because he wanted a pair of blue swade shoes but from the kindness of her heart she gave

Reading this autobiography I've learned what life was like for a black child in the early 1900's and the realization that even with racism and poverty a person coming from nothing can