Resumo de Everything But Money

I was raised as a virtually free American in the East Harlem, a section of New York that was called a slum by sight seeing guides and a depressed area by sociologists. Both were right. Our neighbouhood fulfilled all the sordid requirements with honors. We were unquestionably above average in squalid tenements, putrid poolrooms, stenchy saloons, cold flats, hot roofs, dirty streets and flying garbage. Yet, paradoxically, I never felt depressed or deprived. My environment was miserable, I was not.
These are the words Sam Levenson opens his book, Everything but Money, a nostalgic recollection of childhood memories with pride and humor. The blend of sweetness, hilarity and wisdom that runs through the pages of Sam?s Everything But Money can radiate through a family that has lost the value of staying together and enjoying eveything about life without money. Sam presents us a family of a father, mother,eight children; seven boys and a girl. The parents outnumbered their eight children with philosophy, psycology, love and discipline and helped them to fight with dignity the menacing poverty and surrounding misery. Sam?s family was a rich and happy one not because they had all their requirements met, but the will power to be rich and happy. ? I was a most fortunate child. Ours was a home rich enough in family harmony and love to immunize eight kids against the potentially toxic effects of the environment beyond our door. Since the social scientists do not, as far as I know, have a clinical name for the fortunate possessors of this kind of emotional security, I might suggest they label them ?the privileged poor?.
A family of ten like Sam?s, living in the slums of New York with litle or no money certainly had hills to climb in order to meet up with life. The way Sam?s family climbed their own hills, erases the idea that money alone and other things often associated with wealth make a happy life. Sam?s family lived in plenty despite money. ? Ours was was a life of plenty: plenty of relatives, neighbours, boarders, janitors, landlords,holidays, cockroaches, cats, dogs, music, books, romance, fights, parties, weddings, medals, illnesses, politicians, superstition and junk?.
Sam surely lived in his boyish years with a journalistic eye to catch the nitti grittis that made their live eventhough poor yet very rich. Their family lived in plenty of hope, family pride, discipline, love and faith in education as the key to freedom. Their family engaged in a relentless fight against the enemy, poverty, the fight for survival, survival with dignity. Sam seems to prove a point; that they triumphed over poverty and the surrounding misery that threatened them. ?While we did not have the purchasing power to buy first class merchandise, we did possess the will power to be first class human beings. Things could be junk but people did not have to accept such fate. Man could fight back?.
Their parents played a cardinal role to keep the family bond. Mama was the most instrumental force that kept the family going. Sam?s parent were the type who observed strict family code of ethics in bringing up kids. ? Papa and Mama set the the moral tone of the family?. Mama had a philosopher?s insight and a prophet?s foresight??. Mama practised medecine without a liscence but not without a psycology.?
Sam takes us back to his boyish days where kids were great inventors of games, jokes and a world that could only be lived and understood by them. He makes us participate in their fun, plays and even poetry
Spell Tennessee
One-sy, Two-sy
Three-sy, Four-sy
Five-sy, Six-sy
Seven-sy, Eight-sy
Nine-sy, Ten-a-sy!

Charlie Chaplain sat on a pin;
How many inches did it go in?
One, two, three?..

Cinderella dressed in yeller
Went upstairs to to kiss her feller
How many kisses did she get?
One, two, three?.Sam Levenson?s Everything But Money is a moral masterpiece to all generations. It explores family values which forms the very basis of society. Sam ends like the great teacher he is, ??Like grandma who cleaned the old apartment before she moved, before you leave this earth and move to outer space, take a hand in cleaning up some of the dirty space down here- the spaces between nations, religions, races?..The greatest hope for the human race is in the science of human relations, in the perfection of dependable formulas for human understanding, in the creation of giant laboratories in which the atom of hatred will be split and put to peaceful uses, in which antibodies will be discovered for personal and group violence. Our survival depends upon understanding the behavior of victims of preju

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