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Poverty As Depicted In The Glass Castle And Being Poor

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Poverty As Depicted In The Glass Castle And Being Poor
Being Poor In America At one point or another, whether we grew up poor or are living as poor college students now, many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and the vast majority of us think we know very well what it means to be poor. And while many of us are fortunate never to know true poverty, we are rarely so fortunate to know true financial security. Many Americans are only a small medical emergency or moderate natural disasters away from extreme financial distress, or even bankruptcy. The authors of The Glass Castle and Being Poor extraordinarily impact their readers about the issue of poverty based on their own experiences, the time periods, and their specific childhoods. Through her …show more content…
Though John Scalzi never reveals his own experience with poverty like Jeanette, his biography tells us that he was spent his childhood in California in poverty and was able to work out of it similar to Jeannette Walls. John takes on a “no tolerance” attitude when it comes to stereotypes about the poor, especially victims of hurricane Katrina that hit in 2005. The reason he wrote “Being Poor” was because of the people asking why everyone did not just leave when they were told to and avoid the hurricane. He answered in his essay indirectly that these poor southern people do not have reliable transportation, live hand-to-mouth, and have nowhere else to go even if they had the means to get there. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane in the history of the United States, and the sixth strongest overall. The severe destruction left many losses of life and property damage, but for the poor it was the worst. John Scalzi wrote this essay for the ignorant people wondering why the poor in New Orleans did not just leave when the hurricane came. The details he gives describe on an everyday basis what these families are going through. “Being poor is clutching that box of Raisin Bran and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last” gives many details in one line. Raisin Bran is a simple type of cereal and one that can be off-brand. Trying to make the kids understand it has to last is showing that many times that box might be all a whole family has for a month. This was the largest natural disaster in the history of the United States, and people are asking the poor why they did not leave. Many think that it is easy to move out of poverty, but they have never experienced true poverty before. Many families are single-parent households who wake up and work all day,

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