Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-7

Chapters 8-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-17

Chapters 18-20

Chapters 21-23

Chapters 24-28

Chapters 29-32

Chapters 33-36

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 18-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 18 Summary: “Hillsides and Flatlands” by Héctor Tobar

Héctor Tobar’s contribution to this collection is a reflection on his time during the 1990s as a new father and journalist. He covered stories about impoverished and often violent south-central Los Angeles, which is de facto segregated. Most of the population here is Black and Latino. Middle-class, mostly white residents populate the hills around LA, while the flatland is a sprawling 100 square miles of impoverishment to which Tobar can look down from his home. There are two Los Angeles.

One day, he goes to report on the murder of a nine-year-old who died several days after his family was ambushed by a gang in a neighborhood near south-central LA. Their car had broken down, and the gang members mistook them for a rival gang, pumping the car with bullets, injuring most of the family, including children, and eventually killing young Hector Martinez.

Tobar visits a makeshift memorial where the child was shot, where he witnesses no “outrage”: “No one railed against the murderous demons who had perpetuated the crime, or against the neighborhood’s poverty, and the grimness and hopelessness from which one murder, and hundreds of other murders, had been born” (160). Residents seem to accept that this is their lot in life.

Tobar also visits the devastated and grieving family. Although Hector’s young mother was physically injured, the real injury is to her heart and soul. She tells Tobar how much she adored her son. She cries so much that one of the television crew members there to interview her asks her to stop, stating, “[…] this isn’t easy for us either” (161).

Tobar returns to his office after a long day, planning to write his story. He listens to a radio program about a young boy who is a mathematical genius. As Tobar sits in his car, he thinks about the murdered Hector, this boy on the radio, and his own infant son, at home on his hillside. He recognizes his own powerlessness to control the future or always protect his son, weeps for all that has been lost and all that may be lost, and then enters his office building.

Chapter 19 Summary: “Invisible Wounds” by Jess Ruliffson

Jess Ruliffson contributes a section of her graphic novel based on interviews with veterans of the recent US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In these pages, veterans who have returned home are met with apathy or fear from those who believe they may be dangerous because some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

One former soldier reflects on the way people treat him differently after finding out he is a veteran. Another observes that because he has no physical wounds he simply appears as “a normal guy” (164). A third remembers the change in atmosphere during a playdate with a neighbor and her child as they discussed his disability and he quipped, “I’m not dangerous or anything” (165). The neighbor acted uncomfortable and left with her child soon after.

Chapter 20 Summary: “How” by Roxane Gay

In Roxane Gay’s short story, the main character, Hanna, supports her unemployed husband and multiple family members who live in a single home in a Finnish community in the North Country of Michigan. She works in a restaurant during the day and a bar at night. Her father is an ex-miner, unemployed for 15 years, and he is alcoholic who sexually abused Hanna and her twin. Though she has five brothers, they do nothing to help support the rest of the struggling family. Hanna’s mother abandoned her family for a new life but returns years later seeking absolution yet not really appearing sorry for neglecting her children.

In her spare time, Hanna sneaks away to a nearby university to sit in on lectures and sleep with young college men in their residence halls. As she sits in the classes or reads in the library, she imagines what her life could have been like and thinks about the day when she will be able to “be more than a waitress with a great rack in a dead Upper Michigan town” (169).

Hanna’s real love interest is a long-time childhood friend named Laura. They have never confessed their love for one another, nor do their friends or family know about their affair. Hanna comes to the realization that she cannot remain in such an untenable situation and in the end escapes for a new life alongside her lover, sister, niece, and brother-in-law: “They piled into Laura’s truck, their belongings packed tightly into a small trailer hitched to the back. They sat perfectly still, held their breaths, looked straight ahead” (180).

Chapters 18-20 Analysis

This section of Tales of Two Americas makes visible those who are frequently shunned or ignored. The people or characters who appear in each of these contributions may seem, at first glance, to have little in common. In fact, their invisibility is what unites them. In each piece we meet individuals who are disadvantaged, mostly abandoned by their communities, and left to fend for themselves.

Roxane Gay’s protagonist, Hanna Ikonen, for example, supports her extended family on the small income she generates from employment in a bar and restaurant. She dreams of another, different life. She acts out her fantasy life by sitting in classes for which she is not registered at a local university and by sleeping with the college men she meets. They are unaware of her identity and do not know that she is not an enrolled student. She is invisible to them. Moreover, her own husband does not truly see her. He is emotionally abusive and relies on her to support him.

Likewise, the veterans in Jess Ruliffson’s “Invisible Wounds” appear almost as ghosts. Though they may not bear physical injuries from their time fighting America’s wars, they carry the scars of that experience within. When one man tells a visitor that he is a veteran but not crazy, she reacts with alarm. The damage that these veterans carry is not met with compassion but fear.

The Martinez family in Héctor Tobar’s reflection also appear invisible. Though a child was murdered when the family was ambushed by gang members in south-central Los Angeles, their grief is met with apathy when one television staffer asks the little boy’s mother to stop crying so that the crew can interview her. Likewise, the people who live in the neighborhood where the boy was shot express sorrow but otherwise accept that the violence and brutality surrounding them is simply their fate. Gay’s character Hanna makes an escape, leaving behind those who take advantage of her. In contrast, the audience is left to wonder what became of the Martinez family, their neighbors in Los Angeles, and the veterans that Ruliffson interviewed.