Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts. 1-5)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphey
Pages: 11-53

• Summary

This story starts out with Ben Carson and his family. Ben's mother leaves her husband because he had another wife and children that she didn't know about. After a while Sonya, Ben's mother, starts to leave home because of her psychological problems due to depression and not having not having any support through her divorce. Throughout everything Ben's mother always kept telling Ben and his brother Curtis how hard they had to work to be what they wanted to be. Their mother made them work really hard; allowing them only three television programs a week and requiring them to read two books a week with a report. Even when her neighbors chastised her about how she was raising her children she didn't care because she knew it would benefit them. To Ben and Curtis it did seemed unreasonable at first but then they realized how much they were learning from these books.
Ben also explains many racial conflicts he had gone through during his childhood. One example was when he won the highest academic achievement certificate. When he received this award, one of his teachers announced to the whole school during the award assembly and said "You're not trying hard enough"(Carson 42). She was trying to say that the rest of the school population should try harder and not let Ben, one of the few Black students in the school, receive this certificate.
When Ben reaches high school he gets crowded into peer pressure. The people at his school always wore the nicest clothes and so he began to beg his mother to buy him these nice clothes, insensitive to the fact that she couldn't afford those types of clothing. He started to cap, ("make the most sarcastic remark possible, and add humor to it" (Carson 42)), students so he could be a part of the "in-crowd" because that's what they did as well. As a result his grades dropped.

• Quotation

"Almost daily she'd say, "Bennie, you can do anything you set yourself to do" (Carson 37).

• Reaction

When I read this part it reminded me of my mother. My mother is always telling me that if i want something then I have to work hard to get it. A lot of things that Ben's mother, Sonya, does makes me think of my mother.