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In Breaking Night, Liz Murray described what she had experienced so sincerely. She completed high school and won a New York Times scholarship while homeless, and graduated from Harvard University in 2009. She has been awarded The White House Project Role Model Award and a Christopher Award. Lifetime Television produced a movie about Murray’s life story entitled From Homeless to Harvard, which premiered in April 2003. Murray is the recipient of Oprah Winfrey’s first ever Chutzpah Award. Her memoir, Breaking Night, was released in September 2010 and within a week landed on The New York Times best-seller list.
As a child, Liz Murray crammed cafeteria food in her backpack on Fridays so she could stave off starvation during the weekend. Now 29, she works with a non-profit organization called Blessings in a Backpack (www.blessingsinabackpack.org) that supplies today’s children with food for the weekend when school cafeterias are closed. Liz says, “If I’d had access to a program like Blessings in a Backpack when I was an undernourished child in New York City, I may not have gone to bed hungry all those nights. Thankfully, with this organization’s continued commitment, thousands of children across America won’t have to.”
Liz Murray’s story is thrilling and her delivery innocently honest, as she takes audience on a very personal journey where she achieves the improbable. Her story sounds like a Hollywood movie—and it practically is. Today, she travels the world to deliver motivational speeches and workshops to inspire others. Liz is the founder and director of Manifest Trainings, a New York based company that empowers adults to create the results they want in their own lives.
Breaking Night by Liz Murray is a firsthand look into the world of inner-city poverty. Born to drug-addicted, mentally ill parents, Liz grew up largely neglected. More than a memoir, Breaking Night is an eye-opening account of the realities of poverty and drug use in the American cities, what it does to children, and how difficult it is to break the cycle, to somehow overcome the lack of options that defines poverty. Liz's is a heartbreaking but unique tale that will stick with you.
This paper aims to analyze the cultural values reflected in Breaking Night. Then with the aid of some reference books, the author of the paper would like to take the novel Breaking Night itself as a case study, and do some in-depth analysis of the development of the theme and the cultural values reflected. With the methods of exemplification, comparison and textual analysis, the paper explores the reasons which have caused different views between China and Western countries in focus perception, and puts forward deeper understanding toward this novel and the unending American dream of love, splendor, and fulfilled desires. The analysis of the social phenomena in Breaking Night will surely display a further understanding of the social-historical background and the cause of the culture values in America.
2 Breaking Night and American Cultural Values
It is usually acknowledged that the macro-stage of the whole story provides a great amount of information about the author and the novel. For an autobiography, the author and the story are tightly associated. Accordingly, with thorough knowledge of the author’s whole life, we can find the outlooks of the author which will assist us in understanding the themes clearly. With thorough knowledge of the novel’s gist, we can get a further understanding of the American cultural values.
2.1 The Plot of Breaking Night
Born on September 23, 1980, Liz Murray was from a poor and drug-addicted parents family in the Bronx. Her mother, Jean Murray, was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease that she had since birth. Because of this, she was qualified for and received welfare check per month. Liz’s family life revolved around the first of the month—the day the welfare check was due. On that day, food was abundant. However, within five days, the money would be gone and for the rest of the month, Murray and her sister survived on egg and mayonnaise sandwiches. They attempted to squelch the pain in their burning stomachs by consuming ice cubes, tooth paste—even chopstick.