so did the lava, and it was a miracle. Admittedly, I knew once my friends had died that I would

Suddenly my eyes flew open, the coldness slowly lingered away. My body felt warm. Almost as warm as how my mouth felt the last time I had sipped on my grandmother's tea. My grandmother always told me to have faith and to believe in the end everything would be alright. I felt the frigid saltwater against my skin. “Where am I?” I thought to myself. I couldn’t quite recall what had happened nor where I was. All that I could recall was hearing screams of innocent children and parents trying to comfort

In America, we all have these certain ideas of what it means to be poor. Linda Tirado, having experienced all levels of the lower economic class, in a voice of brutal honesty, takes all the perceived notions of Americans and shatters them to bits. Linda Tirado’s story begins with explaining her introduction to poverty after she dropped out of college and went out on her own. Tirado claimed that she constantly had to work multiple jobs in order to keep up with all the bills, especially the medical bills from her accident, childbirths, illness, and depression. Tirado was in an accident in which the uninsured other driver escaped paying for the jaw surgery she needed, so she found herself not only in constant pain and without teeth, but in serious debt. And so it began, with no car, severe pain, and increasing depression, Tirado’s story continued to struggle down.

In his short story, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries”, the author George Saunders crafts an all too human tale as he shows the journal entries of the narrator, a husband and father of three who faces financial insecurity, and displays the effect money, whether in lack or excess, has on our actions and thoughts. The social setting of the story is almost identical to our current society, however there is a distinct divergence in the Semplica Girls, which are girls from impoverished backgrounds that hang from a wire in their heads as an odd, inhumane, and yet expensive, lawn ornament. In the pursuit of the “good life” for both his family and himself, the father places great importance on wealth in order to secure happiness, joy, and status through

I wholeheartedly endorse what Cottom calls “The Logic of Stupid Poor People”, that poor people buy status symbols to survive in this world. She demonstrates that, as a middle class black girl, her family had a way of turning the tables in their favor in multiple aspects in order to supply their needs and wants. Poor people buy expensive items, sometimes depriving themselves of their other needs, just for the respect of others. These items are 21st-century status symbols, they can single-handedly determine the fate of your everyday encounters. The author uses personal experiences to support her argument, persuasively changing your entire perspective and broadening your mind to another individual’s lifestyle.

In the article, "Stupid Rich Bastards", the author, Laurel Johnson Black, gives an insight on her life and upbringing in a "poor" family, the effects it had on her, her life goals, and dreams. Black’s article was published in the book This Fine Place So Far from Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class in 1995. Throughout the article, Black gives an explanation of the conditions in which she and her family lived in, which include her parents having to take on various jobs such as her father being a plumber, junk man, car salesman and her mother—a cook, school crossing-guard and a McDonald 's counter worker as well. With all these jobs, Black also mentioned that the income was still inadequate. Being that her family 's way of living was not the best, her parents decided that one of their children has to make it or go to college, and Black was the one who was going to be the one to do that. She did this with hopes that she would earn more money, be able to make a better life for her and her family, maneuver along with the "stupid rich bastards", talk like them, learn their ways but not be like them, and explain to her family about the lives of the same "stupid rich bastards", people who had or made more money and had better lives or felt better than others. Along with her telling her story, the main purpose of Black’s story is to bring to our attention that she is trying to “keep the language of the working class in academia” (Black 25).

When I was 8 years old, the thoughts running through my mind should have been like any other 8 year old girl: going home to play my brand new Nintendo DS or playing house with my little sister. Reality was, I wasn’t a normal little girl. I was the girl whose life got turned upside down in a matter of minutes. No matter how much anyone tried to tell me, I knew a normal 8 year olds life didn’t include being surrounded by doctors 24/7.

Peter Singer’s argument over the immoral spending of the average American is presented in his piece “The Singer Solution to World Poverty” through two analogies. He compares both situations against each other, as well as to the real life situation of most Americans. His first analogy involves a woman named Dora who delivers a boy for $1000 and then uses said money to purchase a nice TV. However the boy’s life is put in jeopardy and she is compelled to rescue the boy. Singer introduces the idea that she could’ve spent that money on herself in many extravagant ways, and states that many Americans do this already. He addresses that Dora is in fact unlike most Americans in that most Americans do not directly cause the misfortune

he AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my first day there, after an hour of "training," I met Paul, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and then needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted; he didn’t want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasn’t used to anyone being kind to him — even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little bought so much. While elated that I had literally made Paul’s day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, "Do I really want to go into medicine?"

I liked bell hook’s essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”. Bell assesses the light in which higher class people view the poor or lower class. Bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins grew up in a small Kentucky town where her father worked as a janitor for the local post office. As one of seven children she was taught that money and material possessions did not make her a better person but hard-work honesty and selflessness determined character. Her hard work landed her acceptance into Stanford University. Although she received various scholarships and loans, her parents worried that she would not have enough for books and supplies or emergency funds. Regardless of this, belle went on to earn a Ph.D. Her experiences and education earned her a very good reputation and even an authority writing critiques on popular culture and diversity (hooks 431-432). She uses ideas in her essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, that stem from her own personal experiences with poverty to add credibility to her writing, as well as examples from pop culture and mass media to demonstrate how these representations portray the lower class in ways that radiate negative stereotypes. She wrote the essay because she saw how the poor had many assumptions made about them. It wasn’t until college thought that she made that discovery. She discovered how unjustly they were represented due to the

As a minority gets older they realize the hard truths of society. These truths involve many different types of stereotypes that contribute to racism and overall surround the idea of inequality and framing in social economics. In Diana Kendall’s piece “Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption” social inequality is viewed as a heavy topic, that the media abuses. In fact, Kendall uses the Census Bureau to point out that “the net worth of the average white household in 2000 was more than ten times that of the average African American household and more than eight times the average Latino/Latina household” (338). Based on the facts from this source minorities are financially at a disadvantage and are presumed to be unhappy due to lack of wealth. However, money does not control or even affect happiness rather Kendall makes a point that framing does, which can be seen through James McBride life story “The Boy in the Mirror”, where the world McBride’s mother framed for him, one without inequality, begins to crumble . McBride paints a picture of the dramatic change that happened when arriving at adulthood when he writes, “We did not consider ourselves poor or deprived, or depressed, for the rules of the outside world seemed meaningless to us as children. But as we grew up and fanned out into the world as teenagers and college students we brought the outside home with us, and the world that Mommy had so painstakingly created began to fall apart” (415). The simple

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feeling of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

When she got near the porch, she stopped to take a look at the house.

Imagine growing up dirt poor with multiple brothers living in a small, old trailer in Louisiana. Having zero worldly possessions and working yourself to death to achieve the little possessions you have. “We were so poor as kids. I didn't even see a bathtub, running water, hot water, commode - we didn't have any of that.” says Phil Robertson in his biography UnPhiltered. In his biography he discusses his journey from going to rags to riches. He gave up a football scholarship from the University of Louisiana-Monroe to become a full time fisherman and trapper to make a living for his family. Money didn’t come easy for Phil and his family so he had to work for everything they had. Mr. Robertson is a family man who raised 4 christ loving boys.

People hold on to pieces of jewelry, furniture, and other symbolic collectables that is passed through generations. These things can remind a person of a loved one that is seen as being priceless.

One sunny day on the busy streets of Chicago, a homeless man walked down the sidewalks scowling at nearby street peddlers. He went by the name of Richard Walker, better known as Rich, which was very ironic. He walked down the sidewalks through different people, catching sections of their conversation. “Look at Rich! Don’t give that old homeless man any money!” Although Rich was well used to it, didn’t mean he took it lightly at all.