Friday, January 19, 2007

"His Mother, The Whore" chapter of Dogeaters

“His Mother, The Whore”
*The title is very fit for this chapter.*

As I was reading the chapter titled “His Mother, The Whore” in Dogeaters, I was rather repulsed. My mind kept wandering as I read trying to fathom the context of the chapter. It is so hard for me to imagine a seven-year-old child being trained to steal, cheat, get high, and have sex; but being raised in middle class United States in the twenty-first century, I am hidden from this reality. As I was reading the chapter, the only thing that kept popping in my head was how these people reminded me of the United States. There was Uncle, a low-life middle aged man taken in little boys and being their savior, yet teaching them to be distasteful and minces to society. How does that remind me of the United States, well I think of poverty stricken areas where gangs and violence is the only option for young children.
The melodrama of the boy’s life is extreme. The boy’s mother was a crack whore who could not feed him let alone herself. He was an orphan. Nowhere to go; Uncle saved him. Uncle buried his mother and gave him a place to call home. So often young children are bribed into slavery. Throughout the U.S. children are born to addict parents and feel as though they have nowhere to go and when that one person who makes the effort to care for the child, that child is free. Uncle freed the little boy; Uncle gave him shelter, food, life.

“I would do anything for Uncle in those days. We all would- grateful orphans who earned our keep, eager to please and turn our loot over to Uncle.”

I am appalled by Uncle. Letting the ten-year-old boy have a good “fuck”, as Hagedorn put it, was heartbreaking.

“Uncle watched us hump and writhe as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, his expression benign and serene.”

I think of young Chinese women trying to survive in the United States using their bodies to put food on the table. These women's bodies were abused and yet they would become more and more emotionless as the jobs went on. This little boy could get women and would feel nothing. He could get men and he would be paid. He felt something by the men that pleasured him. The young Oriental women felt as though they had no way out when it came to prostitution, but I feel as though the little boy liked it. I could be terribly wrong with my conclusions, but I see this chapter as bringing to life the reality and the sadness that abandoned children in the Philippines were put through. This little boy did not know any better than to enjoy stealing and any other opportunity to gain money.

4 comments:

Priya Jha said...

I really liked the way you try to bring together the reality of prostitution as work, both with your example of Chinese women and the boy in the novel. I am not entirely sure that my reading would concur with yours in terms of pleasure -- but, I don't think it's an inaccurate reading that you provide either, Denelle. In fact, I think you could tease out these comparisons more if you thought about sexual pleasure for the boy and the fact that his uncle sets it up for him (even though he's only ten!) and sex work, both the Chinese women and his own when he comes of age.

Priya Jha said...

PS: Why is this chapter called, "His Mother, The Whore" when it's really about him?

Deborah Arroyo said...

I know someone who has lived a life similar to Joey Sands' life. At age 12 his prositute mother had one of her friends sleep with him. He speaks openly about his life and after talking to him and reading this book (especially this chapter) I get a sense of how it must feel for a young man or woman to grow up and look back on their life and see how wrong it was for them to be exposed to such things at that age. Maybe this chapter is called "His Mother, The Whore" because conveying to the reader what kind of life Joey lived as a boy, or the kind of mother he had, might make the reader more sympathetic towards his character, than if there had been no chapter like this. This chapter gives us insight into why maybe he is the way he is as an adult. Another thing that struck me about this chapter is that it mentions nothing (except one sentence) about Joey's father. Why is it that mothers are held more responsible and blamed more for the sad lives of their children and fathers become invisible and are not help accountable?

Lucas said...

I imagine most readers were immediately repulsed by the idea of Joey having sex at the age of 10. Anyone who wasn't unsettled by that would immediately have his or her records checked for "business" trips to Thailand. But secure in the knowledge that I never leave Redlands and in the spirit of analytical discussion, why is sex at that age immediately judged as immoral? What is the basis for this judgment? Religion? Society? Is ten-year-old sex universally wrong, or is it possible that in some culture under some circumstance it might be acceptable? Was Joey's life ruined by the exposure to sex at such a young age? How would his life have been different if he had his first sexual encounter ten years later? It's interesting to think about. I don't have the answers; hopefully you do.