Belonging In Steven Herrick's The Simple Gift

Belonging is when you feel comfortable with a person, place or group. Perceptions and ideas of belonging and not belonging vary. A sense of struggle to belong can emerge through a connection made by a place, person, group, communities and the larger world. Struggle is represented through Steven Herrick’s free-verse novel ‘The Simple Gift’ and related text ‘Fast Car’ a song performed by Tracy Chapman. These texts can connect how the struggle to belong and find one’s place is important in the lives of some people.

Steven Herrick’s ‘The Simple Gift’ demonstrates the elements of struggle to belong and acceptance through pain and surrounding of rejection, homelessness and dealing with death. Herrick shows this through the characters of Billy,