“The Price Was Always Remembering to Be Grateful”: Charity, Help, and Pride in Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming
Title and/or Affiliation
Allison Estrada-Carpenter, Texas A&M University
Presenter Bio
Allison Estrada-Carpenter is a PhD candidate at Texas A&M University. Her work focuses on working-class studies, young adult literature, popular culture, school stories, and television studies.
Session
Panel: Valuing the Working Class
Location
Zoom
Start Date
28-6-2024 11:00 AM
End Date
28-6-2024 12:15 PM
Abstract
Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming is a working-class text showing the lack and scarcity common in depictions of working-class culture, and displaying the pride and ingenuity the Tillerman children often enact to survive. The help they receive from others is only sometimes altruistic. Instead, it is frequently a performance, an unspoken script, in which the Tillerman children are expected to act accordingly or be deemed ungrateful. Their cousin Eunice’s willingness to adopt and care for her young cousins results from resignation, religious obligation, and a desire reform the Tillerman children. Dicey feels pressured to perform gratefulness to her cousin in order to maintain shelter and food for herself and her younger siblings. There is an expectation of gratitude to survive that does not exist for middle-class children. She knows that staying with Eunice is a conditional act of charity. Dicey’s decision to leave Eunice’s house, with hopes that their grandmother will take care of them, emphasizes the realities that adolescents of lower socioeconomic classes face when accepting help.
“The Price Was Always Remembering to Be Grateful”: Charity, Help, and Pride in Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming
Zoom
Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming is a working-class text showing the lack and scarcity common in depictions of working-class culture, and displaying the pride and ingenuity the Tillerman children often enact to survive. The help they receive from others is only sometimes altruistic. Instead, it is frequently a performance, an unspoken script, in which the Tillerman children are expected to act accordingly or be deemed ungrateful. Their cousin Eunice’s willingness to adopt and care for her young cousins results from resignation, religious obligation, and a desire reform the Tillerman children. Dicey feels pressured to perform gratefulness to her cousin in order to maintain shelter and food for herself and her younger siblings. There is an expectation of gratitude to survive that does not exist for middle-class children. She knows that staying with Eunice is a conditional act of charity. Dicey’s decision to leave Eunice’s house, with hopes that their grandmother will take care of them, emphasizes the realities that adolescents of lower socioeconomic classes face when accepting help.