Different From What We Expected

The Same Kind of Different As Me, by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, seemed on the surface to be an interesting story of charity, love and redemption. Our discussion brought out these facets of the story and also some of the darker sides of this supposedly true story, such as an agenda of evangelism and indoctrination. On the surface, the story seems to be about a charitable wealthy couple who begin volunteering at a shelter for the homeless. There they meet a man who is at first quiet but warms up to the charitable couple as they prove that their intentions to be helpful to those less socioeconomically fortunate than them are virtuous and sincere. The wife of the couple becomes ill, and the story follows her courageous course through illness to death.

Our discussion brought out some of the darker and deeper facets of the story. The charitable couple, Ron and Deborah, engaged a ghost writer, Lin Vincent, to help with the book. Vincent is politically active and conservative, having collaborated on Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue as well as being linked with white supremacists. Among our group, only Amy C. had researched the ghost writer and was aware of her role in the book. Along this line of thought, Dennis claimed that while reading the book, he didn’t trust the veracity of the dialog supposedly spoken by the black homeless character, Denver. Heather thought Denver’s way of speaking was realistic, as it reminded her of much that she heard when she lived in Charlotte, in the deep South.

Cindy T. had particularly noticed the episode in the book when Denver went to visit an aunt who he had known in his childhood when he had lived like a slave. Denver described how, when visiting the old lady’s house as an adult, he had felt an evil presence that chased everyone out of the house. This highlighted some of the dark and superstitious beliefs in the story. Although this dark aspect didn’t seem to play a major role in the story’s action or in the religious beliefs and actions in the story, superstition and the supernatural appeared numerous times in the story, such as when Deborah recognized Denver from a dream, when Denver forecast Deborah’s bad luck, and a few other times.

Our discussion touched on some of the other details in the story. Shirley noticed that Denver claimed he ate 2 chocolate pies daily when he was a slavelike farm laborer. Marcia said she had been fascinated by the way that Denver had run away from the perpetual debt syndrome of the slavelike laborer’s life and became homeless.  I mentioned that Ron had felt like he was acting out guilt from white privilege when he began volunteering at the homeless shelter. We had general agreement that Deborah was sincere in her wishes to help the homeless and that Ron came to feel that way, too.

We talked at length of examples of volunteers helping the homeless. Marcia told us about some work she did among the homeless in Austin when she was a nurse. Judy told us stories from her work for the homeless at LifeWorks. She told us about a somewhat secret subculture of homeless children who choose to live free on the streets rather than joining an orphanage-type home. Marilyn mentioned a woman who cared for homeless children and treated them well; with respect and love without judgment, this woman created an atmosphere and success that Marilyn claimed was similar to how Deborah treated the homeless in the book. Amy C. suggested a website about choices for end-of-life care http://theconversationproject.org/. Through examples of many fine organizations and the volunteers who run them, we found a very positive theme that the book advocated: giving from the heart.  

Thanks to Carol for nominating this book and inspiring our multifaceted discussion.