Part II, Lies to My Mother, Chapters 16-24 Summary and Analysis

Chapter sixteen, "In the temple," finds Bragg in New York in 1994. He was working as a journalist in midtown and covered a number of crime stories; he reprints one of his stories, concerning a murder, and notes that he still wants to rewrite it but that a journalist can't think that way. He notes that he'd often call his mother and tell her how he was doing. She didn't really understand what his job was, just that he was doing well. She'd never heard of the newspaper he worked for and sometimes reminded townspeople who Rick Bragg was. Bragg also notes that he travelled far and wide and had seen every kind of poverty; he didn't tell his mother about any of that.

Chapter seventeen, "Saturdays in...