In “Brother, I’m Dying” the author Edwidge Danticat discusses some of the hardships her family had faced due to troubles they encountered in their homeland Haiti. She discusses her parent’s departure to the U.S, while she and her younger brother Bob lived with their Uncle Joseph and his wife in Bel Air. She talks about her Uncle Joseph’s experience when trying to withdraw himself from Haiti for safety reasons, and the rejection he experienced when entering the U.S. Edwidge portrayal of immigration came from experience at an early age. Having to witness her father leave for another country and her mother soon following without her has not only given Edwidge a sense of independence but has made her knowledgeable of the treatment given to immigrants from those of superiority. In order for a foreigner to leave one country to explore the next there are numerous steps taken before being considered for approval.
In the early pages we learn that Ina, Selina's older sister, has reached puberty and is home sick with what we can assume are menstrual cramps. Understandably, she does not want to talk to Selina or entertain her. Selina finds her father, Deighton, working on some accounting books he is studying in hopes of getting a job. Deighton tells Selina that he has been left a plot of land back in Barbados, and he tells her not to tell anyone about it until her mother knows. Selina asks if she can tell her best friend, Beryl, and her dad acquiesces, and gives her some money for candy.
Eventually, Chris discovers that his father was still married to Marcia for seven years while with Billie, attempting to maintain a home with both women. The two women discover what he’s done when Chris is only 2 years old, forcing Walt and Billie to move. It takes four more years before Walt divorces Marcia and marries Billie, and during their relationship frequent fights can be remembered by their children. In high school, many years later, Chris learns of what his father did and grows angry at the hypocrisy of his father’s expectations. After five years of dwelling on his anger, Chris decides that he cannot stand human hypocrisy and disappears, attempting to teach his family a lesson as well.
Edith Whartons novella Ethan Frome portrays the opposite of a man chasing “The American Dream.” The story is set in Starkfield, New England in the early 1900’s. Ethan, the protagonist of the novel was called back to his parent’s farm from college because his father had suffered from a head injury. That event changed the rest of Ethan’s life. The story unfolds as an anonymous narrator discovers the mystery behind the tragic situation. Throughout the novel, Ethan Frome, traditional gender roles are focused upon.
Benjamin Franklin, being imperfect like the rest of us, fathered a number of illegitimate children. One of the mothers was a young lady he was engaged. He broke off the relationship, because she couldn't bring him a dowry. He later married a house type woman, Deborah Read, and they adopted one of his illegitimate children, and had two others together. During these middle years of his life he worked on getting his printing business off the ground.
Patient was an abused child who as an adult, didn’t know of any other way to earn a living. After patient became pregnant when she was a young teen aged girl, she told many people that her brother Keith was the father of her child. The child whom she gave up for adoption immediately after the baby boy was born. Aileen went hitch-hiking across America working as a call girl or a prostitute. It was said that she was married to a man named Lewis Fell, but she later started dating a woman named Tyria Moore.
In The Kite Runner, this woman is again Sanaubar. She is the mother of Hassan and left him when he was only a week old to be with traveling dancers and singers. This made Hassan have to grow up without a mother. But not only did Sanaubar leave Hassan, she had an affair with Baba. Baba always loved Hassan for the fact that he was Hassan’s father, but he still struggled to show it.
I was unable to describe to Mary that her father will no longer into the room and pick her up or even tell her stories at bedtime. I also urged her brother, Edward Jr. to not try to mention it to her, but support and take care of her as best as he can. Mary was growing up and meanwhile this whole time I was telling her stories of her father and everything that happened between him and me inclusive the part with Bertha and how she burned the house down. Edward Jr. looks a younger version of his father, finally happy and married to a wonderful wife who is expecting her first son within this year. Mary enjoys going out with her friends to parties and even brings my cousin’s daughters with her.
When Novalee was only seven years old her mother ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred. That left her living with other people who still did not truly care. She finally thought she had found someone who loved and cared about her, his name was Willy Jack Pickens. Novalee thought that she was going to marry him some day. But on there way to California he proved her wrong by leaving her at a Wal-Mart “He was going to California and he had left her behind...left her magazine dreams of old quilts and blue china and family pictures in gold frames” (16) thats when things went wrong.
Carmen da Gama was Aires's first cousin, the orphan child of Epifania's sister Blimunda and a smalltime printer named Lobo. Both parents had been carried away by a malaria epidemic, and Carmen's marriage prospects had been lower than zero, frozen solid until Aires amazed his mother by agreeing to the making of a match. Epifania in a torment of indecision suffered a week of sleepless nights, unable to choose between her dream of finding Aires a fish worth hooking and the increasingly desperate need to palm Carmen off on someone before it was too late. In the end her duty to her dead sister took precedence over her hopes for her