Summary Of M. K. Asante's 'Buck'

Buck is a memoir written by M.K. Asante about his life between the ages of 12-18 growing up in his rough neighborhood in North Philadelphia. In the book Asante faced some hard situations to deal with within his household. In the beginning of the book Asante’s brother ends up getting sent across the country to go to prison, his father ends up leaving his mother leading to her having a mental illness. With all of that was going on it leads him to go to the streets to help him cope with everything that was going on. Throughout the book Asante puts parts from his mother’s diary in the book. What led him to actually reading his mother's diary was when his mother was in the hospitalized for her mental illness. Asante explains that from him reading his mother's diary it made actually see things through her eyes and a better understanding of a lot basically a “eye-opener”. In my opinion, I feel as though Asnate was not justified at all for reading his mother's diary. I feel as though it was wrong because everyone deserves some type of privacy. Asante’s mother could have been talking about some much more deeper stuff that he thought. His mother could have talked about some stuff she did not want to share with him yet and went out his way to read her diary. Having no idea what he was going to run into, Asante could have …show more content…
Today there is 450 million people suffering from some kind of mental illness. In my opinion, I do not think it is enough awareness about mental illness in the world. Mental illnesses are just as serious as any other illness out there in the world. Most mental illness lead to death, suicide, shutting down from loved ones, etc. Mental illnesses are looked at in a different way from each cultural standpoint. The way each metal illness is looked at or taken care of is how serious of the illness is. I feel that cultural has a very crucial impact on mental illnesses and the depth of each