Poverty and childhood in 'A Gift for My Mother'

Poverty is something this short-story weights very highly. It is a very big issue for the family in the short-story, and it is a very common issue a lot of places in the world today. Many people live happily and don’t have to worry about money at all, while others have to struggle a lot to just bring food onto the table. In the short-story “A Gift for My Mother” by the author Viv McDade in 2011, she wants to show how the children feel about living in a country filled with poverty, and if they understand the depth of it, and she wants to show how it affects them. Africa is a great example of a country with very common poverty in a country, because Africa all in all, is a very poor country. The short-story is told from a first-person narrator with a viewpoint from Lucy. Lucy is a little girl, and she has just turned 10 years old.

Lucy is from South Africa where she lives in a tiny house with her mom and dad. Lucy is a very thoughtful person, and she wishes the best for her family. She is a good student, she attends school, and she does her homework. The only thing she is struggling a bit with is the math, which she thinks is difficult at times. Lucy loves the nature, especially flowers, she knows the name of all the flowers she picks, for both her mom, and their neighbours. The short-story takes place in South Africa which we can figure out after reading page 8 line 1, where we can read the word bushveld, which is a hot and dry region of South Africa. Lucy and her parents live in a very tiny house, and they are very poor. They live at the poor part of the city, which is separated from the other part with a railway line. This is a good example of how they have distinctly parted the rich and poor. Every time the mother looks over on the other side of the city, she always becomes so dreamy thinking about how the houses have hallways and moulded skirting boards.