Tell Us We're Home

         
      I've recently finished reading a book called " Tells Us We're Home", by Marina Budhos. Without revealing too much, the story is about 3 girls who are just like the eight-grade girls living in Meadowbrook,
New Jersey. The only difference is that their mothers are maids and nannies. Their friendship is shattered when one of the girl's mother is accused of theft and loses her jobs. After finishing this book, I thought that this book had a "Person Vs. Society" type of conflict. It's no Hunger Games but I still believe the main conflict of this book is "Person Vs. Society" because the main characters were going against the issue of immigrants in their town.

     Throughout the book, you notice the characters going through some sort of issue involving discrimination against hispanics/latinos. For example, when Maria's brother, Renaldo, ran into some trouble at Grove Field, it involved the lacrosse boys discriminating against hispanics/latinos. They said "We going to have a Puerto Rican parade here?". The "white boys", as Maria called them, didn't want the hispanics/latinos to play soccer on their fields. You can see that in this town there's this tension between the two races.

    Also another thing you notice is that  Mr.Cramer immediately assumed that Jaya's mother stole jewelry from Mrs. Harmon's small jewelry collection. He didn't think any other person would be capable of doing such a thing. I guess he made this assumption because of the way society has made people think of hispanics/latinos. For example, the media tends to show hispanics/latinos doing drugs, stealing things. Usually in the media, hispanics/latinos tend to be the bad ones. This is what creates some sort of stereotype. It makes people think hispanics/latinos are like they are in the media. So Mr. Cramer could have been influenced by the media into thinking that Jaya's mother stole his aunt's jewelry. He even said he had no factual evidence he just assumed it was Jaya's mother because he thought their race was like that. He thought that Jaya's race tend to do these sort of things. I'm not saying all hispanics/latinos are good, some are actually the way they are presented in the media.

    Overall, this story has a "Person Vs. Society" type of conflict because throughout the story you tend to see the main characters going against the issue of immigrants in their town. 1) There's some sort of tension between the two races. 2) People in life are influenced by the media to think that these people are the way they are presented in the media.