Found An afterword in my hardbound copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

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I blogged in the past that I finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in my ipad after about two years. Actually, I had been keeping a hardbound of it even before I started the ebook in my ipad. 

Earlier, I am about to stow the book in my wall bookshelf (read, far from my bedroom shelf which has the to-read stacks) because I finished it already. 
But I skimmed and found the Afterword.
Author Betty Smith who wrote this semi-autobiographical novel gave us Francie, a vivid recaller of all things past, a vivid describer of all things around, a vivid feeler of emotions around. I recalled that I can't finish this book in one sitting because it has full of vivid imagery of Francie's childhood, details from headlice to games she enjoys. As I progressed reading halfway, she also grows up and experiences new things.

This afterword by Alfred Kazin in 1989 struck me and I don't want tp forget this. "For fullest appreciation, it probably helps to have been, just once upon a time, a little poor yourself. Or as the Good Book says, "poor in spirit."

This is year 2024 and being a millenial and as a lawyer for the poor in my country Philippines, I have seen poor and poor in spirit.

I want to elucidate that "want" or "poorness" or "lack" drive a person to strive to achieve something, to eat good food when there is no food, to have me-time when one is busy, to make things easy when there is hardship. This poorness is what lacking in 2024 when everything is available from airlines, personal cars, pet bottled water, hot water, information at one's fingrtips, library in a few clicks. This generation has to experience extreme hot, extreme cold, flooding to understand that there is lack of care for the earth we live in.

Let us not remain "poor in spirit" but  transcend this poorness in our generation.





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