Commentary On The Book 'Out Of The Easy'

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys “My mother’s a prostitute. Not the filthy, streetwalking kind. She’s actually quite pretty, fairly well spoken, and has lovely clothes. But she sleeps with men for money or gifts, and according to the dictionary, that makes her a prostitute.”(pg1) Out of the Easy is a young adult book by Ruta Sepety; which is about a young seventeen year old girl name Joise Moriaine; who lives in the Quarter in New Orleans during the 1950’s. Joise works part-time at a bookseller while her mother works for a madam named Willie. Joise want to leave New Orleans and attend Smith College in Massachusetts; where nobody knows that her mother is a prostitute. For the last ten years Joise has to hear the whispers and rumors the town people says about her mother. “They thought I couldn’t hear their whispers, their snickers. I had heard them for ten years. I cut across Conti toward Chartres, clutching my book under my arm. The …show more content…
Courtesan, harlot, hooker, whore. I’d heard them all. In fact, I could look at someone and predict which one they’d use”(pg8) Josie is the opposite of her mother. Joise loves literature, education, and has a great passion about books. Her mother is naïve, materialistic, and self-centered. “Hello, Josie,” they’d say with a half-smile, followed by a sigh and sometimes a shake of the head. They acted like they felt sorry for me, but as soon as they were ten steps away, I’d hear one of the words, along with my mother’s name. The wealthy women pretended it singed their tongue to say whore. They’d whisper it and raise their eyebrows. Then they’d fake an expression of shock, like the word itself had crawled into their pants with a case of the clap. They didn’t need to feel sorry for