S-Town and Ysrael

S-Town

Brian Reed is the producer of a show called This American Life. John B. McLemore emails the show to get them to investigate a murder that happened in his hometown. Brian travels to the town, Homestock, Alabama, even though he thinks it’s a shit town. That’s where he got the name S-Town. The story is told in flash backs, with a narrator.

Ysrael by Junot Diaz

Ysrael is a local boy whose face got eaten by a pig as a baby. He is famous because he wears a mask to cover his deformed face. The neighborhood kids torment him and try to take his mask off to see his face. Yunior and Rafa live in the campo during the summer with their uncle because they’re mom can’t watch them while school is out. Rafa and Yunior are brothers. Rafa is twelve and Yunior is nine years old. Rafa doesn’t include Yunior in a lot of things, and Yunior feels left out. Rafa is interested in more mature things, like girls and doing violent and illegal things, and doesn’t let Yunior do these things with him. They fight a lot when they live at home, but are friends when they live in the campo.