The rent collector author7/6/2023 I found that really hard to swallow the idea that her reading skills would have progressed so quickly. Who, by the way, learned to read incredibly fast and was soon presented with summarized versions of Moby Dick and Romeo and Juliet by her teacher. Instead, woven through the whole length of the book are lessons on living true to yourself, making the best choices, rising above your circumstances, etc- all presented in the snippets of poetry and literature that the rent collector teaches to Sang Ly. I thought- oh, they'll be able to read instructions on the medicines foreign doctors at free clinics keep giving them, that never seem to work, or they'll learn that having to pay rent for the crummy place where they live is a scam, or they'll be able to leave the dump and find better employment, thanks to becoming literate. It does, but not at all in the way I expected. She convinces this woman to teach her to read- hoping it will somehow help her family improve their circumstances. Sang Ly, the mother, despairs about the misery of her life- until she suddenly finds out that the short-tempered drunk woman who collects their rent (for a shack made out of tarps and cardboard on the edge of a cesspool) is literate. Each day they barely earn enough to eat that night, and their young child is chronically ill. About a family in Cambodia that lived on the outskirts of the largest waste dump in the country- making a meager living by picking through the trash for recyclables. Based on a real place, but the story is fictional.
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