Problem of Poverty in three Young Adult Novels: A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, Buried Onions, and Make Lemonade, The

Millions of adolescents living in urban America must worry more about safely navigating the streets of their neighborhoods than in pursuing the American Dream. Their available income does not meet needs as basic as health care, nutrition, sleep, personal space, and quality education. Thus, the problems associated with growing up in poverty are a relevant topic for young adult fiction. Three writers, Alice Childress, Gary Soto, and Virginia Euwer Wolff have addressed this subject, each revealing underlying beliefs about the conditions of poverty and the strategies young people can employ to overcome it. Childress and Soto both suggest that inner city poverty is the result of institutional racism. To succeed in the White mainstream, individuals must reject the values of their ethnic culture. Wolff, on the other hand, suggests that poverty crosses all racial lines and to escape poverty one must choose to take advantage of whatever resources are available, however limited they may be.

Today, poverty is associated in the American mind with urban slums. The terms inner city and inner city youth are code words for ethnic enclaves in the crowded streets of large cities. In the popular mind, the words impoverished youth call up images of Black or Hispanic teenagers involved in drugs, street gangs, prostitution, and murder. This widespread conception springs not only from racial stereotyping propagated by the media, but also from the civil rights activism of the sixties. To highlight the disastrous effects of systematic racial oppression, ethnic American writers of young adult literature have portrayed their characters struggling to break free of poverty against overwhelming odds. Entrenched racism made it nearly impossible for young protagonists of color to rise above circumstances designed to keep them in place.

A Hero Ain't Nothin But a Sandwich

Alice Childress' novel, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1973), reissued in February, 2000, is valued as a classic; many African American students, teachers, and critics read it as one of relatively few books that reflect experiences from an African American point of view. It depicts the overwhelming forces of racism which keep the characters from escaping ghetto life. Benjie, the thirteen-year-old protagonist living in Harlem says, it is "hard to be a chile because my block is a tough block and my school is a tough school" (9). Dangers abound in the form of sexual predators, muggers, street bums, gang members, and dope pushers. A child is forced to stay alert and grow up fast because, like rats forced into an overcrowded cage, people living with such diminished prospects turn and feed on one another. Benjie knows that he must either be tough or be a victim. However, he relies on heroin to get him through the dreary reality of his days.

Childress suggests, through the voices of her other characters, that rising above the circumstances of the ghetto neighborhood is an option available only to those who are superhumanly dedicated to that goal. Further, like Benjie's best friend Jimmy, they must turn their backs on their culture and community to succeed in the White world. More than lack of money keeps average people like Benjie and his family in place. These individuals are enmeshed in the coils of systematic racism. Butler, Benjie's stepfather, resents social workers and school officials who blame Benjie's addiction on a troubled home life. Butler asserts that Benjie's problems go deeper than being "understood." or "misunderstood" by the family. he says, "Damn, nobody ever understood me! . . . . I damn, for sure, don't understand bein treated like a dog cause I got a dark complexion" (17). As Butler sees it, poor Black men have three choices in life: criminal behavior, living off a woman, or working at a menial job. Butler chooses to work and doesn't expect much more than peace and quiet and a home where he can "close the door and shut the people-eaters outta [his] life" (20). Nigeria Greene, Benjie's teacher, an educated Black man, also believes that the odds are stacked against Benjie because of his race. He asserts that any Black man who succeeds in the White world must deny his own reality and give back to people in authority "all the silly answers required" because Black children "are shut off, shut out and shut up, forced to study the history of their white conquerors, this peculiar place of white facts, white questions, white answers, and white final exams" (44-45). Even Walter, the local drug pusher, insists he is only a cog in the vast machinery of capitalistic racism. He says, "If I quit pushin tomorrow, you think any junkie is gonna do without this poison cause I didn't show? . . . . From city to city, town to town, from block to block and house to house, there is someone who will get you anything you want, if you got money" (62-63).

Childress' resolution to the problem of poverty is for members of "the [Black] nation" to work together to fight racism and overcome the institutional barriers which keep Black people poor. In pushing this agenda, she celebrates Black endurance, Black heroism, Black culture, and Black community. "It's nation time" is the war cry of the enlightened characters in the novel.