Social Inequality Through the Eyes of Liz Murray: Her Personal Narrative
Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray
Citation: Murray, L. (2010). Breaking night: A memoir of forgiveness, survival, and my journey from homeless to harvard. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Breaking Night is an inspiring account of Liz Murray's life experience living in the depths of poverty in New York City and later, how she catapulted herself out of poverty and into a completely different world of Harvard and a new way of living. Throughout the pages of this memoir, Murray reflects on the various forms of discrimination she felt as a poor, white, young adolescent woman growing up in New York City in the late 1980s-early 1990s.
Murray experienced many different feelings of discrimination and alienation growing up, that often interacted simultaneously:
“I always tried to slip out ahead of the students. They made me nervous. Walking between them as I left class, tension tightened my whole body. At least, I thought, Ma had finally scraped all of the lice off my head. Still I was clearly different from them all...My dirty clothing hung heavily off my body. My socks were always weeks old, and I wore my underwear until the crotch dissolved away into nothing. I was aware of the stench I gave off, so I knew they must have been aware, too." (Murray, 2010, p. 59)
This example shows how Murray felt alienated from her peers even before the lessons began.
"I tried to tell myself their judgement shouldn't matter. I was, in one way, going through life much faster than all of them - who else cursed freely in front of their parents, went to bed anytime they wanted, knew about sex, and could demonstrate, crudely, how to mainline drugs when they were just six years old?" (Murray, 2010, p. 59)
This example shows Murray's acute awareness of how she was different from her peers and how she attempted to shift her perspective on her situation at just six years old.
"It took everything I had to walk into those buildings. I did not want to enter them. For years, maybe my whole life, it felt as though there was a brick wall down the middle of everything. Standing outside those buildings, I could almost picture it. On one side of the wall, there was society, and on the other side, there was me, us, the people in the place I came from. Separate. We were separate. The feeling in my heart was of the world being divided into an "us" versus "them", and everyone on the other side of the wall felt like "those people". The everyday working period on the train, the smart students who raised their hands in class and got everything right, the functional families, the people who went away to college - they all felt like "those people" to me." (Murray, 2010, p. 249)
This example illustrates how Murray felt alienated in terms of class, ability, and even in terms of her own family.
Citation: Murray, L. (2010). Breaking night: A memoir of forgiveness, survival, and my journey from homeless to harvard. New York, NY: Hyperion.
Breaking Night is an inspiring account of Liz Murray's life experience living in the depths of poverty in New York City and later, how she catapulted herself out of poverty and into a completely different world of Harvard and a new way of living. Throughout the pages of this memoir, Murray reflects on the various forms of discrimination she felt as a poor, white, young adolescent woman growing up in New York City in the late 1980s-early 1990s.
Murray experienced many different feelings of discrimination and alienation growing up, that often interacted simultaneously:
“I always tried to slip out ahead of the students. They made me nervous. Walking between them as I left class, tension tightened my whole body. At least, I thought, Ma had finally scraped all of the lice off my head. Still I was clearly different from them all...My dirty clothing hung heavily off my body. My socks were always weeks old, and I wore my underwear until the crotch dissolved away into nothing. I was aware of the stench I gave off, so I knew they must have been aware, too." (Murray, 2010, p. 59)
This example shows how Murray felt alienated from her peers even before the lessons began.
"I tried to tell myself their judgement shouldn't matter. I was, in one way, going through life much faster than all of them - who else cursed freely in front of their parents, went to bed anytime they wanted, knew about sex, and could demonstrate, crudely, how to mainline drugs when they were just six years old?" (Murray, 2010, p. 59)
This example shows Murray's acute awareness of how she was different from her peers and how she attempted to shift her perspective on her situation at just six years old.
"It took everything I had to walk into those buildings. I did not want to enter them. For years, maybe my whole life, it felt as though there was a brick wall down the middle of everything. Standing outside those buildings, I could almost picture it. On one side of the wall, there was society, and on the other side, there was me, us, the people in the place I came from. Separate. We were separate. The feeling in my heart was of the world being divided into an "us" versus "them", and everyone on the other side of the wall felt like "those people". The everyday working period on the train, the smart students who raised their hands in class and got everything right, the functional families, the people who went away to college - they all felt like "those people" to me." (Murray, 2010, p. 249)
This example illustrates how Murray felt alienated in terms of class, ability, and even in terms of her own family.
Suggestions for Parents and TEachers
Learning and Teaching Resources
- Encourage your students to keep a response journal in which they are able to respond to the content within the book. It is meant to evoke emotional responses. Send home with students and encourage them to share with family at home.
- Involve students in small group discussions.
- Consider showing students the following videos of Liz Murray talking about her journey from homeless to Harvard and the life lessons she learned along the way as before or after reading activities. Click on the pictures below to access each of the videos.