Connections

Another work that relates to my memoir is the novel We Beat the Street.  This novel was about three young African Americans that grew up in South Orange.  They experienced gangs and many other horrible influences.  They were always close friends and grew up on the streets with no money to support their decisions.  These three boys were very intelligent people and they had high potential from the time they were born. 

One thing that relates to Always Running is that they were both caught with the wrong people at the wrong times and had to face charges for this horrible inconvenience.  There were a group of kids that one of the boys hung out with that weren’t the greatest kids to be around.  They were going to rob these drug dealers that they heard about or had seen before.  The confronted the men without taking out any weapons and just using threats towards them.  Before you knew it there was a moderate sized brawl on the corner between the boy’s friends and the drug dealers.  Soon enough the police arrived to investigate the situation.  One of the boys that he was with happened to have a knife on him so they all faced armed robbery and had to spend the night in jail, Thanksgiving night.

Literally the two works are similar because the two both associate gang life and success in the end.  Rodriguez had many things stopping him from being successful as did the three boys from the other work.  Rodriguez had to face racial discrimination, being a Chicano.  There were many riots and violent movements between races in both books except in Always Running it was between the Whites and the Mexicans.  They both became successful in the end of their novels, Rodriguez became a poet and the 3 men became doctors.

Figuratively the two novels were similar in that neither of them really experienced physical pain.  They were both involved in a few fights, but besides that they were mostly hurt psychologically.  Most of the pain they experienced was in their minds.  Rodriguez had to think about how he could overcome this gang life in LA.  The three boys had to focus on their grades and getting back on track to fulfill their dreams as doctors.  Both were successful in doing so and both are where they dreamed of being since they were children.