My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter.
An opening sentence like that is meant to grab your attention immediately and tell you something quite significant about the speaker. In this case, the speaker is the author herself. She is tossing down the gauntlet from literally the very first words of the text by providing a single image capable of encapsulating an entire economic circumstance. The details remain to be filled in and that is also partially the point. The fact is that people wind up living in a homeless shelter for a huge variety of reasons. And yet, it is probably safe to say, a number of people will immediately make assumptions about the narrator’s race, willingness to work, mental and emotional state of mind, and level of familiarity with alcohol or harder drug one injects, pops, or snorts instead of drinking not quite responsibly.
Match.com’s website had been open on my browser for several days. I’d already filled out the profile, uploaded pictures, and looked around at the profiles of men my age.
For the most part, reviews by professional reviewers writing for big name newspapers and periodicals were almost universally glowing. When one starts moving down a few levels in terms of professionalism to blogs and readers writing reviews posted for free on websites devoted to books, however, a stark change quickly becomes noticeable. Details overlooked by those who are paid very well to write reviews of memoirs by fellow writers who area on the verge of living the dream start becoming pretty big deals. For instance, the paragraphs just preceding this quote concern the belated birthday gift from the author’s father of $100 via a card sent through the mail. Instead of using it to pay bills or necessities, the first splurge is on lunch at a new Thai restaurant for her and young daughter. (Interestingly, not a lot of those negative reviews mention the relatively odd whiff of white privilege associated with claiming financial hardship while parenting a toddler already having apparently developed a taste for Thai food.)
Of course, it is rather difficult to focus on that aspect of this section when the next several pages is devoted to the seemingly incompatible decision to shell out the monthly membership cost of a very famous internet dating site. A cost which had to take a bite of at least one-fourth of that birthday check sent by a parent likely concerned about things like eviction or the power being shut off.
The Chef’s House was one I envied, with its view, yard, trees that dropped apples to rot in the grass before the landscapers mowed over them. I wanted their back porch with its matching polished wooden furniture and maroon cushions. I imagined the lazy afternoons they must have had on the weekends—the shrimp on the grill, the chilled rosé wine in stemmed glasses, sipped under the striped canopy that rolled out from the side of the house.
Those negative reviews focusing on singular details that may admittedly make one kind of stop and think for a moment miss the much more disturbing larger picture, however. At the point at which this quote is taken, the author has taken the often grueling and sometimes humiliating job of cleaning houses for people living in a much better economic circumstance than herself. This content of this quote is one that forms a recurring theme throughout the book. When the author dreams of better times ahead and enjoying financial security, it is more often than not framed within the context of other pretty meaningless aspects of existence like drinking wine and relaxing by the grill.
Rarely does the author engage with non-tangible non-transactional possibilities that come with financial security. There is a lot more to life than uninterrupted access to chilled wine, dependable DVD players, and dating websites, but too often those kinds of things seem to be the author’s only vision of a future freed from cleaning up the messes of others. Not that this would be fodder for negative reviews by itself. But when you are almost screaming out loud for pity by opening your book with the statement that your daughter learned to walk while the two of you lived in a homeless shelter, dreams of not having to go without cold fermented grape juice come off as embarrassing whispers of pettiness.
