The opening of the book No Shame in my Game starts with the story of a hulking boy named Jamal finding a way to keep his wife and himself afloat in their small rat infested apartment. “He was earning just thirty-four dollars on a good day but if he could get enough days like that he could keep the families head just above water.” (pg. 5) Jamal and his wife are trying to enough money to afford a better place to get their daughter back from social services. All the time going for work Jamal sees young black males out selling drugs on the street, showing the social structure of where he lives and as we find out later in the chapter his mother is addicted to crack. The opening of the book talks about the struggle of trying to get hours to work so he can make more money and his manager will not let him. This is because in the inner city they do not have unions trying to help protect the workers as most of the people are just living or working in a low income area.
No Shame in my Game does a tremendous job of narrating a problem that faces a bunch of college bound students or young teenagers. In the book Jamal chose to work to support his wife instead of going for an education, he took a minimum wage job just trying to get by. A rise has gone up lately of young adult’s choosing to work rather than go to school because they need to make money to help support families. This is even more prevalent in the inner-city setting just where such people like Jamal live in. Children that get raised on the street have a greater risk of dropping out of school and getting into selling drugs, some believe that rap music is causality, as it talks about how it is a great way to make money and get rich quick.
Kids growing up with rappers as role models turns out to get a majority of them involved with gang activities or other illegal activities trying to follow in the footsteps of the others. In the story “Jamal is all too aware that his mother’s downward spiral destabilized his life...