Looking At Our Books Through a Lens of Injustice and Fairness. American Son By: Brian Ascalon Roley. Tanzim Ahmed 811

          The question that I asked after reading American Son by: Brian Ascalon Roley was, “how does money figure in this text?” This book deals with many of the real issues that teens face today. The book features two boys named Tomas and Gabe who live with their single mother. For a living, Tomas trains and sells guard dogs to celebrities who pay a high price for them. One day when Tomas took his brother to a client’s house to sell a dog, they brought the mother of the dog that they were going to sell. Unfortunately, only the son of the dog was being put up for sale. The client wanted both dogs and offered up to a total of 25,000 dollars for them. Tomas really loves the mother dog and refuses to sell her. Finally the client agrees to buy only the boy but says that if Tomas ever changes his mind, he will buy her from him. Gabe hears this idea and makes a decision to sell the mother because he knows that they need the money.

          A few days later when Gabe is sure that Tomas is sleeping, he takes the mother and Tomas’s car and runs away. He sells the dog and plans to drive all the way from Los Angeles to San Francisco faearing the thought of his angry brother. But when his car runs into some mechanical issues, he is forced to call a tow truck and tow his car to a garage. When the tow truck guy arrives, he is suspicious that Gabe is a runaway and calls his mom from the credit card that Gabe used to pay for the tow. His mother comes and brings him back home to a furious Tomas. Fortunately, Tomas did not beat Gabe senseless. He said that Gabe can pay him back by doing small duties such as going with him to steal from homes.

          Money is basically what drives Gabe to do what he did. Maybe if they had money, Gabe wouldn’t have to run away and Tomas wouldn’t have to steal. The author in this book is showing us how good and bad money can be. Money can help us and bring us the things we need. But it can also persuade us into doing things that are wrong and inhumane. The author uses money as a symbol and builds a story or part of a story out of it.