¶ … Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir
Waldie's 1995 manuscript "Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir" provides readers with a biographical account of the writer spending his childhood and adolescence in Lakewood. Lakewood was one of the largest suburban communities in California during the 1950s, when most of the actions in the book take place. The way that the writer manages to bring forward the idea of life as constructed from both the benefits and detriments coming along with living in Lakewood is certainly impressive, as most readers are likely to feel transported into the world that Waldie creates for them.
It would be wrong for someone to relate to the book as simply being what its title tries to make it seem. The text is much more than a suburban memoir, taking into account that it provides a detailed story of life in a particularly compelling place and the relationship between the writer and the respective place. "I live where a majority of Americans live: a tract house on a block of other tract houses in a neighborhood of even more." (Waldie 2005) It is interesting that readers do not necessarily have to be from a suburban environment in order to truly understand the book's message, as it is directed...
Joseph made me hate Communists, then intolerance, and finally everything that could break the charmed pattern of our lives. I am not sure the Sisters of St. Joseph expected this from their daily lessons on the Red threat. The nuns' stories made me want to keep everything that I could. First, I would keep my faith. Much later, I would keep our regard for each other, and the ways
" Despite this apparent contempt, Frank does in fact desperately want to fit in with the happy crowd he suggests he otherwise despises, but April recognizes his hypocrisy as well as her own miserable lot in suburbia and takes her own life as a consequence. After April commits suicide, Frank's frantic reaction is not unlike the running part of the trip taken by Ned Merrill to reach a home that was
Waldie writes of his family home in Long Beach, "Rooms are small in houses that have less than eleven hundred square feet of living area. The room I slept in was ten feet by ten feet" (Waldie 29). Davis goes one step farther when he discusses the disparities in many Southern California communities where low-income housing is not only unavailable, it is discouraged by affluent homeowners. He notes, "Spanish-speaking
Otherwise put, why do the conservatives still follow unattainable goals and why does the population still vote for them? Thomas Frank builds his book on a simple belief: the most popularity in America is raised by the conservative coalition. However, this is not uniform, but divided into two wings: the economic conservatives and the social conservatives. While the first wing desires to implement tax cuts and other financial regulations, the
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now