Five Reasons to Read the First-Year Reading Book

Hello Friends!

Whether or not you’re an incoming first-year student at Holy Cross, their assigned reading for the summer, as far as I am concerned, should be a part of everyone’s summer syllabus. Selected by the Dean for the class of 2019, Shawn Maurer, Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado is a punchy, caustic, and important book. Here are my top five reasons for getting your hands on a copy:

1. Let me say it again: it is important.

This is an unusual opportunity to hear a marginalized voice. Yes, we have books like Nickel and Dimed, which are essentially books of imitation, detailing the lives of relatively wealthy people temporary leading lives of poverty. But Hand to Mouth is the real deal: an articulate woman writing about her experiences as a poor person in America and being associated with poor culture. Her voice matters, her observations matter, her story matters.

2. It’s funny.

With chapter titles like, “I’ve Got Way Bigger Problems than a Spinach Salad Can Solve” and “We Do Not Have Babies for Welfare Money,” it’s clear that Tirado doesn’t hold back. Her direct, sharp voice laces humor into very dark topics. Despite the comedy, no one would accuse Tirado of sugar-coating the experiences she describes, as it is often a biting, sometimes attacking humor. One line that comes to mind is when she directly addresses the reader, “If your car breaks down, you call a shop. If you are sick, you go to a doctor. If you break a heel, you get a new pair of shoes. Appreciate that, assholes.” (I might also point out here that she can be fairly explicit, which might be seen as a strength or a limitation of the book. Other chapter titles include “This Part is About Sex” and “Poverty is Fucking Expensive”).

3. It’s easy.

I tried starting my summer reading with Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which of course is a light, quick, and fun read after an intense finals period! ……not. While that 800-page beauty decorates my desk in Williams, my copy of Hand to Mouth is already in the hands of a fellow bookworm. 224 pages of gloriously large font and colloquial writing make it a nice way to keep reading while shying away a bit from heavier academic writing.

4. It’s difficult.

While the book does breeze by in someways, the content can be tough, even exhausting at times. Tirado’s writing brings up complex questions about the world in which we live and the issues with which we concern ourselves. She is frustrated by and frequently notes the limitation of human empathy and the willingness of rich people to dismiss, ignore, and forget about the poor. She articulates this well in Chapter 5, announcing, ‘There are millions of us who have had enough of this. We have waited. We have been patient. We have coped. And we’ve survived, which we’ll continue to do. Humans are amazingly resilient. The question is, how can everyone else live knowing that so many of us have to live like this?’

5. It will be on the test.

As an Orientation Leader, I sometimes get the question–Do we have to read the book? And I totally get it. You have one more summer before the big unknown of college and it’s been made abundantly clear to you during Summer Gateways that Holy Cross is an academically fulfilling, but surely, demanding institution. You want a break before that all begins. But this book does not taint summer break, and thinking of it in that way gets away from the real reasons that we read, anyway. Of course, we read to learn. We read to better understand the world. We read because writing can be beautiful. We read because we understand more about ourselves. We read because we understand more about other people. Reading, and I would argue that reading Hand to Mouth in particular, helps us in the struggle towards being more empathetic and thoughtful people.

Many people know John Green as a famous young adult novelist, with now two film adaptations of his novels. I was first acquainted with John Green on youtube, where he produces a variety  of content with his brother. One such variety is the educational videos he helps create in a series called Crash Course. One of my favorite quotes comes from one of those videos, in which he addresses the comically portrayed “High School John Green” after he asks the question, “Will this be on the test?” The now more eloquent and intellectually curious John green replies,

So yes, Hand to Mouth will be on the test. Happy Studying!

DFTBA

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