I chose to review The Secret History by Donna Tart, a novel that follows Richard Papen, a young man from a lower-class California family who attends a small liberal arts college in Vermont to study the classics. He becomes consumed in a tight-knit group of Ancient Greek students who are as mysterious as they are exclusive. Slowly, he is welcomed into their company and begins to form connections with each of his peers, but as he does, he becomes increasingly concerned about their secretive nature and convinced they are hiding something from him. Once he gains their trust, they share that they accidentally killed a man and covered it up. The novel climaxes when the group carries out another murder of one of their friends, who they believe will rat them out to the cops. While the plot is very dramatic and suspenseful, the book mostly focuses on the relationships between the characters in the book and how extreme circumstances affect them. While Richard is lower-class and on scholarship, most of his peers are extremely wealthy and we follow him as he navigates and attempts to infiltrate their world. While he is just as good of a student as them and a kind, loyal friend, he constantly must prove himself in order to upwardly climb the social ladder. Even though the people he associates with are bad people– homophobic, classist, and, as he finds out, murders– he continues to strive for their approval and acceptance. The illusion that he is their equal and wields the same amount of power as they do in their friendship is what causes him to lose himself completely. In the process he reshapes his entire identity and, at the conclusion of the novel, still remains an outsider. Even the reader becomes enchanted by their lifestyle, intelligence, and exclusivity, ignoring their obvious faults. This tragic story highlights wealth inequality and the heights people will go to just to belong. 

The systemic injustice that I would like to talk more about is with the new Texas abortion law. This law physically bans women from receiving an abortion as early as six weeks into her pregnancy. I believe this can be detrimental to a woman’s physical and mental health. If she does not have the option this can have many negative issues. Women should be in full control of their bodies and the choices they make for it. Men having any say in this is just completely wrong and backwards. For example, women may be in the situation where they need this type of medical support and now they do not have the resources to get it and even worse, it’s illegal for them to do so. This is saddening that our society puts women’s needs on the back burner. If more states decide to do this it could lead to families not being able to financially support children and adoption centers being filled to the max. In cases where a woman may have been raped she would not legally be able to get the help she needs. This situation has both negatives and positives to it which is why in the end it should ultimately be the woman’s decision. I would compare this to the  “One’ and the “Other.” I would compare the One to the males who believe they should have a say in women’s bodies and health care. The Other would be the women we get walked all over by men trying to make decisions for them. Women are just seen as the minority group in this case scenario just because of their gender. The whole process of a pregnancy can be extremely happy but if it is unwanted or the mother and father do not have the proper needs to be able to support the unborn child it can be very stressful and draining causing more negatives than positives. 

Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/09/01/1033202132/texas-abortion-ban-what-happens-next

The reading Recitatif by Toni Morrison gives some background into what life inside an Orphanage is like. Orphanages came about in the early 1800s. This reading was published post Great Depression when the orphanages were filled with neglected children. “The number of dependent or neglected children in the depths of the Great Depression, approximately 144,000, then at any time before or since.” Many people don’t even realize the amount of children this would be. After this the Adoptions Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 came to be about. This act helped make sending a child into an orphanage a last priority. The social workers did so by exploring all possible resources to try to give children the least restrictive atmosphere possible.

Technically there are not orphanages still around today and there are three different routes you can take when going through this process; being adopted from a foster car system, as an infant as a private adoption or as a relative or step child of the adoptive parents. However, there are still orphanages opened worldwide. In 1997 the Adoption and Safe Families Act came about to create a time limit that children were allowed to stay in foster care before they were adopted. The goal of this was to find children a safe home even quicker than before. COVID-19 has made the amount of children going into foster care increased rapidly. There is a foster care placement crisis in the state that is used to compound the on going issue. The issue fluctuates in size due to what may be occurring in the world at that given moment.

In the reading, Recitatif, these two girls become from completely different backgrounds and meet in their orphanage. They become extremely close despite their different stereotype groups that they fall into. Many people do not know what the life living in an orphanage is. This story just gives a little insight into what it may be and how people end up there.

1980s “Where is home”. UMBC. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://socialwork.umbc.edu/contact-us/reflections/1980s-where-is-home/.

A brief history of foster care in the United States. CASA of Travis County. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.casatravis.org/a_brief_history_of_foster_care_in_the_united_states.

American Adoptions, I. (n.d.). Do orphanages still exist in America? American Adoptions – Orphanages in America – Do They Still Exist? Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.americanadoptions.com/adoption/do-orphanages-still-exist.