Evicted Metacognition
While reading Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American
City by Matthew Desmond, I found myself lost. There is a lot of landlord jargon
and even more characters. The jargon was not my top priority, so I typically
glossed over the more technical terms and skipped over to the statistics. What
I cared about were the characters. I love all their stories. They were tragic
and many of the characters recalled being at the lowest of lows. Despite their
current condition, these families continue to find hope and happiness in their
lives and each other. I adore them. The only problem is how many stories there
are to keep track of. There are the main landlords, the tenants, the people
from the tenants’ past, and the tenants’ families. Many times I could not
recognize names. Initially, I opted to ignore the confusion and assume this was
a new character. I later came to realize that this was not a good idea and
caught myself when a foreign name appeared. I searched up a few character maps.
None of them were very detailed or descriptive, but they helped me get back on
track. As for paying attention to the landlord jargon, that still is not a main
concern of mine. I can recognize a few terms now. SSI, a monthly payment for the
elderly, blind, or disabled, is so commonly referenced that I have to recognize
it at this point. I rarely look up term definitions. Whether this is out of
apathy or stubbornness, I have no idea. This book made me realize how little I
look for outside help. I only looked for character maps when I was drowning in
names. I still have not looked up any definitions for landowner phrases.
Personally, I am not a fan of law systems and so on, and this book has more of
that than I ever expected to learn in my lifetime. I care more about the family
stories than those surrounding the court. In the end, however, I know I will
turn to research when it is impossible to avoid.
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