A Woman On The Street Chapter Summary

Part 1 – A Woman on the Street
Jeannette starts the memoir with a scene of her as an adult taking a cab home, and seeing her mother rummage through a dumpster. She feels ashamed of her parents since they live on the streets and are barely scraping by while she has a great home and lives very comfortably. Later on she calls her mom and they decide to meet at her mother’s favorite Chinese restaurant, during lunch she asks if there is anything she can do for her mother to help her but her mother is shocked and disapproves of her daughter trying to help her, Jeannette explains she is ashamed of her parents considering her status. Her mother simply replies by saying shame is foolish and she should just accept her parent’s lifestyle since they are …show more content…
The kids enroll in school again and take ear and eye exams so Lori has to get glasses. Her father gets a job at an electrician union which makes a lot more money than all of his other jobs so he buys them toys. At night am an sneaks in since they keep the doors open to let fresh air in and attempts to rape Jeannette so she and brain chase him out and they tell their father and at night they go “pervert hunting”. After a few months her father starts getting sick of city life. He gets fired from the union for losing so many jobs and the kids start to go hungry again except for a free lunch they get at school. That Christmas the family excluding her father set up a tree and decorations and get presents as well for everyone and her father gets really drunk and sets fire to the tree and ruins everything in his drunken rage. Later on when it’s her birthday her dad asks her what she wants and she says she wants him to stop drinking so he does and after a painful detox he decides to go on a camping trip with the family though he breaks the car from making it go too fast and they have to hitchhike back home and her father falls apart and starts drinking again. Her mom suggest they go to her father’s family and he refuses but eventually gives in and goes with …show more content…
The family stays in her grandmother’s basement until they find a place to live. The city is run down and poor and the closest river is extremely dirty. At this new town she enrolls in a school and because of difference in accents she fails the test that would place her in her classes and is put in a class for kids with learning disabilities. She begins to be bullied by an African girl who eventually decides to befriend Jeannette when she sees her help an African boy being chased by a dog and gives him a piggy back ride home. When she finds out Jeannette has become friends with black kids her grandmother gets upset and starts saying a bunch of racist things that upsets Jeannette and they have a fight. When her mother finds out she suggests being nicer to her grandmother. Her mom and dad decide to go to phoenix to pick up belongings they left behind. While they’re gone Erma attempts to molest Brian and Jeannette saves him and they get locked in the basement though it has a door outside they can’t enter any other part of the house. Eventually they find out their parents car broke down so they had to leave all the stuff they went to get and return home by bus. Her parents buy a house in the poorest neighborhood. It’s a horrible condition but her mom says to look on the bright side. While they live there they attempt to start making the glass castle and dig up a foundation for it