A Very Real Trip Down Route 66
by Shane Timson
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I’m Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
Today, I am discussing the book The American Dream a Journey Down Route 66 by Shin Yin Kohr. Now before I get into this interview, I have to give a big thanks to the Audio Reader. They were the ones that made it possible for me to read this book because in the original format it was hard for me to read. I couldn’t read the captions and then determined what was happening in the pictures, but Audio Readers specialized in making print into audio format for people with low vision and other reading disabilities. You can learn more about them by going to https://reader.ku.edu/
This book is a great road trip! If you want to go down Route 66 and not leave your house, then this is the book. The author who is an immigrant and has lived in the United States for a number of years and has been a citizen now for at least four years first learned about Route 66 after reading The Grapes of Wrath. Now she takes the journey backwards because she will start in California and go to Illinois whereas most people – like for example, the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath – went from east to west.
I love the description of how she loads her dog Pug and a whole bunch of stuff she said she didn’t need into her car and off they go feeling every pothole as they go from California to Chicago. She says some of those potholes were so bad, she thought maybe her car was going to rattle apart.
We see all kinds of rusted signs because they officially discontinued Route 66 in 1985 from the US Highway system. A lot of it is in serious need of repair. Signs are fading and as I stated earlier, the potholes.
She talks about how warm and friendly everybody is on her journey and how wonderful the food is. She talks about how on the one hand, she feels isolated, like she doesn’t belong on Route 66.She worries that she won’t fit in but at the same time, everybody is so warm and friendly. As she goes down Route 66, she goes, “I’m skeptical that the American Dream is attainable and yet, at the same time I feel hopeful that it is.”
Much like many people who went down that same road in search of a better life, she is questioning whether it is possible, yet she feels hopeful that it is possible.
As she started her journey, Donald Trump had not yet gotten the Republican nomination and there is a picture in the book of her dog urinating on a Trump sign. At the end of the book when she is in Chicago, Donald Trump has been elected President and there were protesters. She is talking about going home and she said that she is still going to make the trip. She’s not going to let the protestors stop her.
I really did enjoy this book – the illustrations and just the way she wrote it. I felt like I was on that journey. The book only took about an hour to get through but you lived a lifetime within that hour.
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I’m Shane Timson.
