A) What impression of Jeannette's mother do you get in the first section (pp. 3-5)? Why do you think she chooses to begin the memoir with this encounter?
The beginning of the book described Jeannette's mother as being homeless, picking through a dumpster as Jeannette rode by in a taxi. The book portrayed her mother as a very nice, homeless old lady; however it was assumed that Jeannette and her mother did not have a good relationship because of the reaction Jeannette gave upon seeing her mother this way. This section of the book made me question why the mother was homeless. If her daughter had enough money to ride in a taxi, why didn't her mother have the money? or why did Jeannette not lend her mother some money so she would not be homeless? I wondered what kind of family Jeannette had, and how she came to have more money than her own mother. I believe that Jeannette chose to begin with this encounter because she wanted the reader to wonder what I was wondering and the reader to keep in mind how the mother was described and why the particular passage about her mother is important later on in the book.
B) How do Jeannette's parents explain the "skedaddle?" How do they justify all the moves? What are Jeannette and her siblings' reactions to constantly moving?
Jeannette's parents don't really explain the "skedaddle." They justified it as packing up the most important things needed, and heading out of their old town to go wherever they ended up. The kids never knew where they were going, so for them it was sort of an adventure, moving from one place to the next. The Walls' father most of the time said that the family was running away from "henchmen, bloodsuckers, and the gestapo". He made some crazy story up about how the FBI were chasing the family, and then they would take off. The Walls children didn't like moving, but they liked the adventure of going to a new place with more to discover there.
C) Describe a memory you have of moving, whether it was moving homes, schools, or even rooms. What kind of impact or significance did the move have on you?
July 7th, 2006. That was the day my family and I moved to Floyds Knobs, Indiana, from Columbus, Ohio. I was almost 8 and 1/2, and I remember the day very clearly. It was bright, sunny, hot, and not a cloud was in the sky. I remember my family, six of us, grabbing our stuff and piling into our Toyota Sienna van. The moving truck was in front of us, carrying all of our still usable furniture, leaving our garage-size home behind. It was a long day, a four-hour drive. The move did not effect me as much as one would think. I did miss a lot of my school and church friends in Ohio, but I was a young child, and ready to make new friends. Once we arrived in Indiana, I put my old friends aside, and made a lot of new ones. I believe if I had left Ohio when I was much older, it would have had a much bigger impact on my life.
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