American Dream

Mine eyes have seen the glory

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

January 7, 2019 by thewheelbarrow 3 Comments

Buckle up, this one is pretty long. I finished this book a few days ago and the impression it made on me was so visceral, I had to wait to write about it. When I consider what it takes to be a classic, regardless of the medium, my first thought is timelessness. Will this item stand the test of time and all that entails? I believe that the term classic is bandied about too often and too frivolously. We call anything that we like […]

The American Dream as an iridescent admonition.

January 25, 2016 by ingres77 Leave a Comment

The Pearl is a fairly simple tale, a parable, of the destruction wrought upon a family by colonialism, capitalism, and wealth. Kino is a hardworking, but impoverished, man who works as a pearl diver. When his infant son, Coyolito, is stung by a scorpion, Kino seeks help from the village doctor. They are turned away for lack of funds, and Kino and is wife, Juana, make the best of the situation with an herbal poultice. He returns to the ocean in the hopes that he’ll […]

Job Hunting Is a Full-time Job and a Not Very Good One

December 31, 2014 by Mrs Smith Reads Leave a Comment

I picked up Bait and Switch when my son was assigned Nickel and Dimed for a summer reading assignment. I wasn’t surprised by what Barbara Ehrenreich learned about white-collar unemployment in America, since I went through a stretch of long-term unemployment in 2011-2012. Even though this book was published way back in 2004, I think the costs, stresses and failures Ehrenreich encounters have only ramped up in intensity after 2009. As she did in Nickel and Dimed, Ehrenreich dropped herself into the trenches and created […]

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