“Flesh & Blood So Cheap”, by Albert Marrin, is a captivating, fact-filled, book about the Triangle Fire. In this book, Marrin captivates the reader with real life stories of the 1900s, with the just developed New York City, it’s immigrants, and most importantly, the Triangle Fire. This emotion packed book of greediness, heart break, and trauma, is loaded with issues of poverty, classism, racial discrimination, and sexism. The Triangle Fire is sure to make you tear up, without being able to put the book down.

The following pictures show some work in my notebook that expresses some of my thoughts while reading the book.

At the beginning of the book, the author introduced us with information about the garment industry. It shocked me to realize that clothing manufacturing had only been developed a hundred years ago, and made me come up with a central idea: the clothing industry had become very popular. 

After reading on, Marrin informs us of different beauty standards and how the fashion trends had changed drastically. Although I did not write a central idea for this page, the description of ever changing trends made me very fascinated, and I even did a little bit of extra research regarding women’s fashion in the 1900s.

Later in the book, when the Triangle Fire takes place, I was heartbroken and filled with sympathy, because the Triangle Fire was a big diaster.

 

Furthermore, I realized that many social issues are very widespread, and that lots of problems are tied back to things like classism and poverty. Because of these issues, many people are treated unfairly and have an awful time. Although not written down on this notebook page, I would like to add that sexism was also an extremely prominent feature in life at that time, hindering the success of many talented and hardworking women. For example, on page 66, the author states how the girls “had to quit school…felt terribly abused though [she] accepted it as part of life for a girl of a poor family”, and how her dropping out of school early to do back-breaking work not only “helped put food on the table and [paid] the rent,” but the little amount of money she earned was also spent on her brothers to send them a higher education. This shows how unfair biased the two genders were, where one gender made sacrifices for the other to thrive.

 

At last, I made a synthesis page where I connected some leading central ideas I had, some contradicting, like how immigrants enjoyed life in America, and immigrants had a tough time living in America. Although I wasn’t very specific and didn’t add any evidence or page numbers on this page, I created more detailed pages with plenty of evidence for each specific central idea earlier in my notebook.

Because of this, I feel that everybody should definitely read this book. Captivating the reader through heartbreaking and terrifying stories, Albert Marrin educates us about life back then in the 1900s, and on each and every page, is sure to make you exclaiming/;, “I didn’t know that!”