Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.71 AVERAGE
3.71 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
An enjoyable story to listen to but not as powerful as her first book. There were some sections that were very impactful and addressed class issues but most of the book was just an auto biography and felt a little like who cares. I wish it went deeper because I love her first book.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
inspiring
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
3.75stars
An overall interesting read. I was caught off guard by the sex scenes, but in hindsight, they made sense as to explain the situation she found herself in. Chapter 11 about other's responses to her pregnancy (specifically Kristi) had me self-reflecting on whether I would have been truly empathetic because frankly, I cannot fathom coming to the same decision had I been in her shoes.
Quotes:
"I got the sense that not only did work have the greatest value, but I, too, only had value if I was working" (p. 37).
"My mother fully checked out by that point and my father really didn't seem to want to talk about college, or my dreams, or what I wanted to study. What was important to him was that I knew just how much money it cost him to feed, house, and clothe my brother and me" (p. 38).
"I had forgotten the part of the game where no one's education mattered more than the money the university could make from your opportunity to soak up all that learning. God forbid they would make it affordable or easy" (p. 39).
"With every hardship we endured, and in turn every traumatic incident that I had to relay in order to give someone a heads-up that my kid needed trauma-informed care, what I heard most as a response was that I should be proud for getting through it. I was a survivor. I was resilient. People would tell me 'children are resilient' when I worried about Emilia, but I never saw how that could be true. Children didn't have the communication skills or self-awareness to talk to adults about how stressful their lives felt, or that they couldn't in fact handle it. That lack of ability, that silence, seemed to be confused with resilience" (p. 58).
"Resilience is a flag we poor people could wave to gain that trust. If we proved ourselves time and time again - if we pulled up those fucking bootstraps so hard they broke and our response was to shrug it off before we found some way to fix them so we could immediately start pulling again - people nodded in approval" (p. 59).
"I'm deeply aware that while our poverty put Emilia and me squarely in a marginalized group, our whiteness gave us camouflage. Because of our white skin, we weren't immediately assumed to be poor and then treated poorly as a result" (p. 60).
"'Whatever makes you an outsider is what makes you a writer.' I scribbled that one down" (p. 67).
"My life may be relentless, I wrote in a notebook, but goddammit so am I" (p. 70).
"Why wasn't it enough for me, a thirty-five-year-old, to say 'I want to do this,' and why wasn't her response 'Okay, then how can I help?'" (p. 126).
"It wasn't real concern - it never was - it was an opportunity to act as if they knew better than me" (p. 126).
"What she apparently needed in that moment was for me to know she thought my decision was irresponsible and rash. It would have been far more honest if she'd said that, but that would have made her feel bad" (p. 127).
"'Did you eat anything other than that sandwich?' She pointed at the bowl on the table. 'What am I looking for?' 'Cereal!' she said, then patted her stomach, sticking it out as far as she could. 'In my belly!' I laughed. 'You know Emilia Story, you're a pretty cool kid.' 'I know,' she said, like I'd just told her the sky was blue" (p. 127).
"The government, society as a whole, and even people who knew me had opinions on how I should act, speak, parent, and live" (p. 132).
Speaking of not understanding office hours... "I already felt like it was asking a huge favor just to take up space in their class" (p. 137).
Quotes:
"I got the sense that not only did work have the greatest value, but I, too, only had value if I was working" (p. 37).
"My mother fully checked out by that point and my father really didn't seem to want to talk about college, or my dreams, or what I wanted to study. What was important to him was that I knew just how much money it cost him to feed, house, and clothe my brother and me" (p. 38).
"I had forgotten the part of the game where no one's education mattered more than the money the university could make from your opportunity to soak up all that learning. God forbid they would make it affordable or easy" (p. 39).
"With every hardship we endured, and in turn every traumatic incident that I had to relay in order to give someone a heads-up that my kid needed trauma-informed care, what I heard most as a response was that I should be proud for getting through it. I was a survivor. I was resilient. People would tell me 'children are resilient' when I worried about Emilia, but I never saw how that could be true. Children didn't have the communication skills or self-awareness to talk to adults about how stressful their lives felt, or that they couldn't in fact handle it. That lack of ability, that silence, seemed to be confused with resilience" (p. 58).
"Resilience is a flag we poor people could wave to gain that trust. If we proved ourselves time and time again - if we pulled up those fucking bootstraps so hard they broke and our response was to shrug it off before we found some way to fix them so we could immediately start pulling again - people nodded in approval" (p. 59).
"I'm deeply aware that while our poverty put Emilia and me squarely in a marginalized group, our whiteness gave us camouflage. Because of our white skin, we weren't immediately assumed to be poor and then treated poorly as a result" (p. 60).
"'Whatever makes you an outsider is what makes you a writer.' I scribbled that one down" (p. 67).
"My life may be relentless, I wrote in a notebook, but goddammit so am I" (p. 70).
"Why wasn't it enough for me, a thirty-five-year-old, to say 'I want to do this,' and why wasn't her response 'Okay, then how can I help?'" (p. 126).
"It wasn't real concern - it never was - it was an opportunity to act as if they knew better than me" (p. 126).
"What she apparently needed in that moment was for me to know she thought my decision was irresponsible and rash. It would have been far more honest if she'd said that, but that would have made her feel bad" (p. 127).
"'Did you eat anything other than that sandwich?' She pointed at the bowl on the table. 'What am I looking for?' 'Cereal!' she said, then patted her stomach, sticking it out as far as she could. 'In my belly!' I laughed. 'You know Emilia Story, you're a pretty cool kid.' 'I know,' she said, like I'd just told her the sky was blue" (p. 127).
"The government, society as a whole, and even people who knew me had opinions on how I should act, speak, parent, and live" (p. 132).
Speaking of not understanding office hours... "I already felt like it was asking a huge favor just to take up space in their class" (p. 137).
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
I’ve seen people criticizing Land’s choices in this book… but I think her argument is that even people living in poverty should have the right to make choices - to create pleasure in their lives, to improve their circumstances, and sometimes to make human mistakes.