Milkweed

     Milkweed follows the story of a young orphan boy during the Holocaust.  He finds out he is a gypsy but he hangs out with a bunch of jewish orphans.  Thouhout the story, we follow the boy through all his stuggles from escaping the "jackboots" aka the Nazi's, to finding food to survive. 
     This helps me in understanding my big question by illustrating a life of a young boy who has nothing, not even a name for most of the book.  You start to see the world from his eyes, how complicated he thinks it is, to what his morals and customs are when living on the street alone.  You see a different side of life from our own comfortable lives in Boulder.

Bastard out of Carolina

     My big question for this semester is, how does your economic situation effect your lifestyle?  In Bastard out of Carolina, the main character, Bone, narrates how she grew up.  She is very poor, and her mother goes from husband to husband for finacial support for her two little girls.  Even though her mom is trying her best to balance taking care of them and working double shifts as a waitress, it effects Bone and her sister Reeces's lives negitivly by going from husband to husband and putting them in the car late at night when she is trying to get extra shifts. 

     This book helped me understand my question better by illustrating a poor families life and how they live through their daily struggles.  I would higly recomend this book because you feel like you are Bone by the end of the book.  The way Dorothy Allison writes about Bone's life makes you feel like you are expeiriecing the same struggles.  Just get through the first couple chapters then it gets better.