What Social Injustices Does American Notes For General Circulation Expose?

The night before our wedding, my mother needed a fifty-thousand-dollar emergency deposit for surgery. I went to my fiancé, Major Adrian Hayes, hoping he would listen before it was too late. He only saw the number. He paid the deposit in the end, but something between us broke that night. That money became the beginning of every name he would ever use against me. After that, every time I asked him for help, he sent me one hundred dollars. When I was in a car accident, he sent one hundred dollars. When I begged him to attend my mother’s funeral, he sent one hundred dollars. Eight months ago, I found out I was pregnant. I sent him seventy-seven voice messages, desperate to tell him we were having a baby. He never listened. He only sent seventy-seven payments of one hundred dollars. Later, when I started bleeding and was rushed into emergency surgery, I called Adrian and begged him to come to the hospital, to answer the doctors, to save our child. He sent one hundred dollars again. At the same time, Madeline’s Instagram story showed Adrian in his dress uniform beside her at a lavish officers’ charity gala. The comments all treated them like the perfect match. I stared at the screen until my hand went numb. I was begging for him from the edge of an emergency room while he stood under chandeliers beside another woman, looking as if he had already found the wife he wanted. By the time Adrian finally turned his phone back on, his staff officer’s voice was shaking. “Major Hayes... your wife and the baby did not make it.” And in that moment, Adrian went feral.

Nicholas Hunt loves testing me a lot. When I just graduated from university, he tried to make me take on a five-million-dollar house mortgage. After I turned him down, Nicholas was quick to buy Yvonne Myers, the campus belle, a villa that was worth eight million dollars. It was even paid in full. As he held the property deed, he told me, "The truth is, I'm super rich. I've been pretending to be poor just so I can test your integrity. "It's a shame that you never passed my test. I'm very disappointed in you, Elizabeth. Let's break up." I just smiled at him casually. Then, I walked away without hesitation. What a coincidence. I'm the daughter of the richest man in the country. I, too, had been pretending to be poor. Four years later, we bump into each other at the Fortune List Summit. At that time, Nicholas has just squeezed into the top 50 rank. He walks into the venue with Yvonne clinging to his arm. It's then he notices me. I'm wearing plain-looking clothes without any jewelry adorning me, and I happen to be holding a child. Thinking that I'm a nanny, Nicholas begins mocking me. "Wow, you really went all out just to steal one more glance at me, huh? I can't believe you're able to follow me all the way here. "You should learn to accept reality, though. I'm on the Fortune List, while you're working as someone else's nanny. The gap between us is far too wide, so you should stop dreaming already!" I just ignore Nicholas in favor of resenting my dad for making me attend this stupid event. After all, I've just managed to block out one full day just to spend time with my son, and yet I have to waste my precious time on this dumb event.

When my mother won a million dollars from a lottery ticket, she prepared an envelope for each of her three children. After we opened them, my younger brother and younger sister each found a bank card inside. But from my envelope, two 1-dollar coins clinked onto the floor. Seeing me freeze, a trace of unease flickered across Mother's face. "Cassian," she said hesitantly, "Logan and Sienna suffered a lot growing up because your father passed away so early. So I gave each of them 500 thousand dollars as compensation. "You're the eldest son—like a father to them. Don't fight with them over this, okay?" I glanced down at the faded down jacket I had worn for years, the fabric so worn that it had lost its color. Then, my eyes drifted to my younger brother's limited-edition sneakers and to the designer bag slung over my sister's shoulder. Mother seemed to have forgotten that when Father died, I had only been eight. I smiled faintly. "Alright. I won't fight them for it." Hearing this, Mother let out a long breath of relief. The next second, my voice turned cold. "Then I won't fight for the responsibility of supporting you in your old age either."

My mother kept a red notebook recording all of my sister's favourite things. She had a blue notebook for me too. When my mother was hospitalized, I took leaves from work to take care of her. My sister had never shown up. However, my mother recorded in the blue notebook, '15th March, I am not well and am hospitalized. Celine owed me 450 dollars for food allowance. I knew that was not a notebook about my favourite things, but a notebook of all of my expenses. Behind the closed doors, Mother said to Father, "Celine is an evil person. She always likes to compete with her sister. We must take a chance to steal all her money and leave with Belle. Later when we are old, we will ask her to take care of us. I think we should just ask her to pay us back all the money we spent on her that I have recorded in this notebook. I was devastated at that moment.

After my family is burdened with a debt of 5,000,000 dollars, I become the only person in the family who can no longer afford to "die". Dad is trampled in the mud by our creditors, protecting what's left of my school tuition fees even if it means breaking his fingers. He roars, "You can hit me, but don't you lay a finger on my daughter!" At that moment, Dad's small, hunched figure becomes a debt that I can never repay in my lifetime. Meanwhile, Mom kneels before the creditors, grovelling in the mud as she begs for a few more days of grace. Burdened by Mom and Dad's love for me, I drop out of school and go to work at a factory to make as much money as I can as quickly as possible to pay back the debt. Ultimately, my landlord kicks me out of my lodging on Christmas Eve. I'm also sporting a high fever in the snow, but my wages from the factory are still unpaid. I call Mom and beg her to transfer just 50 dollars to help me out. However, she doesn't sound concerned or anxious on the other end of the line and utters in disgust, "Haven't you gotten your wages already, Carolyn Swanson? "How dare you lie to us? Who taught you that? If you can't afford to buy the meds for your so-called fever, then you might as well just die!" Then, she hangs up on me cruelly. I grip my phone in my hands, watching the snow falling from the sky. My hands feel even colder than the icy ground at this point.

My mom is a woman who takes frugality very, very seriously. When I suffer from a high fever, she feeds me moldy chicken noodle soup. In fact, I can only wear my older sister's hand-me-downs since I was a little girl. After working hard for so long, I finally qualify for the final interview of a top-500 company. I keep telling my mom repeatedly to not cause any trouble for me. Alas, my monitor winks out when I've reached the most critical point of my interview. At the same time, the router has lost access to the internet. I rush out of my room hurriedly, only to see my mom flipping off the main switch in the darkness. "Why did you leave the lights on at night? Imagine how much money you'll have to pay! I've already calculated everything for you. If we turn off the lights, we get to save a few pennies per night!" Thanks to those pennies, I end up losing my job that can guarantee an annual salary of a million dollars. Later on, my older sister, Andrea Fletcher, is diagnosed with a kidney disease. In order to latch onto Andrea's rich husband, Kirk Herrera, my mom forces me to work overtime at a shady factory just to gather enough money for Andrea's medical bills. Even when I'm about to die, my older brother, Anthony Fletcher, and my dad keep blaming me. "You can't even get hired at a proper factory! You really are useless, Alice! Your mom went through all those frugal nonsense just to raise you for nothing!" When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day I'm about to attend the online interview. I just chuckle coldly as I look at Andrea, who has just found out about her kidney disease and is waiting for me to earn enough money for her kidney transplant. Then, I toss her expensive, specialized medication into the trash can. "What use is there for you to take the medicine, Andrea? What a waste! Mom already stated many times that being frugal is the way of life! "You should drink more water instead. Once your rich husband finds out how good you are at saving money, he'll definitely compliment us for knowing how to balance our finances!"