Home Influences- Malcolm Kelly

Instructor: Brad & Liz
English Studies
08/17/2011

Home Influences
In the bookThey Poured Fire On Us From the Sky, I see how the main characters (Benson, Alephonsion, and Benjamin) have close connections to their home of Sudan. I also have strong connections from my home of Chicago. I took a look the differences and similarities between the influences that our homes have on us and came to the conclusion that our homes are really what make us who we are today.
The main characters in the book go through enough drama to overwhelm any typical teenage girl. As I’ve read recent, Benson was away from home for quite some time now playing soccer with his friends. He soon began to think of his parents back in Sudan and wanted badly to go back and find them again. I t then realized that the flood and fights their slimmed his chances of returning a back to Sudan to almost nothing. I feel that this experience at such a young age has really affected him too be so young. How would you feel not being able to return to your parents while at the same time knowing where they could be? This definitely had to take a huge mental toll on him and at the same time helped create a strong mental on subjects like this. I can just imagine how he protective he would be towards his kids if they were to ever be away from him for even a small amount of time.
I can relate to this situation as well. Being from the west side of Chicago I was witness to a lot of things at a young age that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. When I was just about nine years old I was in the middle of a constant disagreement between both of my parents. It wasn’t uncommon for me to not be able to contact my father due to my mom’s disliking of him for reasons I try not to be concerned about. I feel that that has affected me largely also because now I get very emotional whenever I can’t see one of my family members due to anything.