Honors Book Review: Bread Givers

Last week was a roller coaster of "up's" and "down's". My first up started on Monday when I figured out how I can make some code that I'm working on more compact and more likely to succeed. It was followed by the down of me learning that over One World Week, I wouldn't be able to work on the robot that I've been coding as I had planned. A later up happened on Friday when I got a good laugh out of the TAP Poetry session, but was followed by a down when I realized that since I shared all of my poems, I have nothing original to read at the class reading. On Saturday, there was a tractor accident that occurred on the way to the robotics competition in LA that I was going to. The traffic practically came to a stop as 5 lanes had to merge into 1. The two hour car ride turned into a 5 hour car ride and we were a bit late to the competition. On the upside, this gave me time to finish Bread Givers.

Bread Givers was an interesting read, and while I was getting bored of the whole poverty thing since this has been the third book about poverty in a row that I have read, I give it props. The book seemed to be tied up a bit nicer than in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Angela's Ashes, but it wasn't tied too nicely. It kept some ends open to leave to the reader's imagination, but it also ended on a somewhat happy note with the main character, Sara, marrying the man that she wants to marry, and her father becoming accepting of her marriage in spite of his past disapproval of it.

There were a lot of themes that I have seen that happen in Angela's Ashes and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that connected to this book such as coming of age, children becoming responsible and taking care of the family, and fathers impeding the progress of the family.

Of all the parts of the book, there was one quote that stood out to me for some strange reason:

"Like a drowning person clinging to a rope, my tired body edged up to that door and clung to it. My hands clutched the knob. This door was life. It was air. The bottom starting-point of becoming a person. I simply must have this room with the shut door. And I must make this woman rent it to me. If I failed to get it, I'd drop dead at her feet."

This was the turning point of the book, so it makes some sense as to why I remembered it so well, but it goes quite a bit deeper than that. It was one of the first times I was able to understand the deeper meaning of  a quote the first time I read it. As if it all made perfect sense and the meaning of it was written in the next paragraph. When she says that the door is life, she is referring to her new life - the one she wants to start. When she says that the door was air, she was referring to a space for herself. A space where she can breathe without a family member telling her how she should live her life. At the surface level, this door was a place for her to study and start living a happier life, but underneath the surface, the door was a way for her to discover herself outside of what her parents forced her to be.

In the end of the book, when her father accepts the new her and her new lifestyle (far different than the person he wanted to raise her to become), it does tie up the story in a nice bow, but there were still many unfortunate problems like her sisters whom were all unhappy with their lives and marriages and of course the passing of her mother. I think that if you like happy endings, then this book is for you. If you don't like happy endings, I still think you will find satisfaction in this book. It was very well written and in spite of my fatigue towards the topic of poverty in the 1920's, I still would give this book a 4.5/5 rating.