Joe and Shirley’s House

Joe and Shirley’s house is the most significant setting of the memoir. This setting represents the culmination of all of the major themes, but particularly What is a Family. Krosoczka first mentions this setting in Chapter 1 when he explains Leslie’s pregnancy and how she brings him home from the hospital. Jarrett moves in with Joe and Shirley at the end of Chapter 2, and spends the rest of the memoir living at this house. When he first moves in as a toddler, Lynn and Holly are still at home since they are in high school, but they soon graduate and move out, and Jarrett lives alone with his grandparents. Jarrett moves into the house on Brookline Street, into a room that was formerly his Uncle Steve’s room, and remodeled to become Shirley’s room, before they knew they had to take in...