Thoughts on Poverty

Being raised in the small town of Pflugerville, Texas I was exposed to poverty from a young age. The schools I attended as a child were composed of mostly children from the two trailer parks that were near my neighborhood. Tessie McMillan Cottom’s “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” brought up the same point that parents made when I was young, that just because you are poor does not mean you have present yourself that way. An example of that is all the trash and random objects thrown in the front yards of the trailer homes. Throwing their trash in the front yard is a choice they are making. Which also goes with Junot Diaz’s “The Money” and how he described the type neighborhood he lived in as tight and the robbery came as a surprise because most the cars and apartments were always getting robbed because there was no sense of respect. Since we lived out of city limits and could almost anything we wanted to, no one really respected one another in the way most neighbors do. I agree with the way both authors portrayed their versions of poverty because I have experienced both types first hand in my home town of Pflugerville.