Journal Entry 1
Week 1

While reading the book our group noticed things that surprised us. For one, we were surprised that Adam was able to find a job easily any day of the week. This goes against many of the stereotypes that are given by the media that people who are in a shelter or homeless cannot get work. Although we were also shocked that a full days work can sometimes only be worth fourteen dollars. Therefore we all understand how easy it probably is to get discouraged.
Another surprising event in the book is when Adam describes how happy he when he is just hanging out with the other guys in the homeless shelter. He says how he will remember sitting around, watching bootleg movies, and eating junk food even when he is old. We all decided that this is important to understand in all of our lives and that to be happy isn’t to have money, but to have support and good friends.
In the first four chapters of the book, the author explores the world of homelessness and looks into its causes. The author discusses many reasons why people may be homeless whether it may be because of circumstance or because of poor life decisions. This somewhat stares in the face of the author because Adam comes into the adventure believing that many of the people were simply freeloaders, yet most the people he meets are poor because of circumstances out of their control. This type of stereotyping of poor people as freeloaders that even the author is a victim of is due to the fact that the extremists in any group of people are usually the people who receive the most attention from people in the media. Therefore this is important in understanding life in general that people should question the status quo of what people believe.
Many people are homeless due to their past. The past is something that can greatly affect the future and because of this shouldn’t it be talked about more? We were interested in the fact Adam’s story wasn’t spoken of much in the book. Why didn’t many people ask him of his past? Adam learned of many people’s past, but never really shared his with others. In the book Adam said that the homeless people in the shelter connected through their stories of how they got where they are today but yet Adam never connected fully with his peers in this sense. Adam says that he gains many friends after the first week but somehow he surpasses the act of sharing his past?
Our group noticed that the ideas put forth in the first few chapters intersected with some of those in the book The Late Home comer. Adam and the people in the shelter are among a minority just as the Hmong were in The Late Home comer. The Hmong were in an ethnic minority but an argument could be posed that homelessness is an ethnicity in itself. Crazy as it sounds; homelessness is a culture in its own. Life for people living from dollar to dollar and sleeping on a bench one night or a curb the next is completely different than that of the “average American”. The Hmong lifestyle isn’t too far from that of a homeless person in the fact that, they started from scratch and began their journey once anew. The American dream was and still is something that both of these “ethnicities” or rather cultures strive for. Simply put, life outside of the norms of American society can be gruesome and difficult no matter who the people may be, homeless or Hmong.