Larraine Character Analysis

You've got to wonder if the street people don't have the right idea. Just live on the street. Don't have to pay rent to nobody.

Men often avoided eviction by laying concrete, patching roofs, or painting rooms for landlords. But women almost never approached their landlord with a similar offer. Some women—taxed by child care, welfare requirements, or work obligations—could not spare the time. But many others simply did not conceive of working off the rent as a possibility. When women did approach their landlords with such an offer, it sometimes involved trading sex for rent.

The power to dictate who could stay and who must go; the power to expel or forgive: it was an old power, and it was not without caprice.

To Sammy, Pastor Daryl, and others, Larraine was poor because she threw money away. But the reverse was more true. Larraine threw money away because she was poor.

Larraine loved to cook. "I have a right to live, and I have a right to live like I want to live," she said. "People don’t realize that even poor people get tired of the same old taste. Like, I literally hate hot dogs, but I was brought up on them. So you think, “When I get older, I will have steak.” So now I'm older. And I do."