The Valley Of Broken Brothers

Improved Essays
The people in Rick Bragg 's articles, “The Valley of Broken Hearts”, “New Development Stirs Old Case”, and “French Quarter 's Black Tapping Feet”, all experienced struggles that gave them courage and made them work to get what they thought they deserved: compensation, redemption, and freedom. It is Navajo custom to mourn for four days and then get on with life. Little Joe died from lung cancer 35 years ago, in 1980. He had taken up a job in uranium mines on Navajo land to buy things for his family. About 1,500 Navajo worked in the government-supervised mines between 1947 and 1971. The tunnels were nicknamed “dog holes,” because the men who worked inside them had to crawl to get around. Almost 200 men died from cancer and other respiratory …show more content…
While that might have been true for the characters in that article, not everyone in the chapter “Silver Hair, Golden Years,” were just poor white Americans. Even though the characters in the chapter’s articles all had rather difficult lives and they ended up happy, some of the characters faced larger problems than …show more content…
Paul Thompson was fighting to maintain his right to play whatever music he wants. They both owned “Old Florida” land, but Thompson was a pig farmer and Thurston was an orchard manager. Thompson was surrounded by a golf course and Thurston was surrounded by a rich neighborhood. Thompson didn’t have to worry about fighting developers off his land, but that was an everyday battle with Thurston. “It’s in the path of… growth,” Ted Kay, one of the several land developers who has pursued Thurston for years. Thurston had to fight to keep things her own while Thompson had to fight to run his business the way he wanted. Most of the characters in the chapter, “Silver Hair, Golden Years,” have money. Only Oseola McCarty is giving it away. Mrs. Hayes, the mother of the first student McCarty’s money has helped, said in wonder, “I thought she would be some… rich old lady.” Paul Thompson and Margueritte Thurston are farmers, but Thurston has to fight to keep her land. Nita Krebs and Anna Mitchell face prejudice in their daily lives. The St. Petersburg High Class of 1939 have to deal with memories of poverty and war. While they all have had hard lives, it doesn’t mean that they were all equally

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