Reading "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn" in April discussion

I love the part where Francie's father picks a house so she can go to a better school. It's one of the most important things he does for her. He is so young, yet even before his alcoholism sets in, his admission of not being able to do creative work, like singing, highlights how poverty and lack of education are key points that permeate the whole book.
It's really poverty that kills Johnny and many others in the book. Later in the book, another character has a similar break with tradition when his life as a workman fails.
I love that the real streets I walked on are mentioned by name. Lorimer being more high-class was a joke to me. It was just a broader avenue when I grew up. When I married, I moved to Grand Street where Francie lived, but on the corner of Bushwick Avenue, which is depicted in the book as
where the hoity toity lived. I moved there in 1967. It wasn't fancy at all.
I won't go deeply into the attempted molestation of Francie. I found the culmination of that part somewhat overdramatic, but the reality of the molesters in the neighborhood is very real. Even when the storekeeper pinched Francie's cheek in the beginning, we can tell that life was dangerous for children.
When Katie gets pregnant, life goes downhill for the Nolan family, but Betty Smith foreshadows Johnny's decline from the beginning of the book. It's very sad. Aloha for now.

It was sad to see Johnny go downhill so fast after he found out about the last baby. Poverty and a lack of resources and just the era that the story happened in. I also kind of think about how life might have been easier for them if they had been allowed to practice birth control. But as Catholics, that was impossible. Here was a young couple in love whose lives could’ve been perhaps a little more tolerable if they could’ve had the pleasure of just enjoying each other as a couple, but they were denied even that.

Denise wrote: "It was sad to see Johnny go downhill so fast after he found out about the last baby. Poverty and a lack of resources and just the era that the story happened in. I also kind of think about how life..."
Thank you, Denise, for bringing up the part about birth control. I remember the "Margaret Sanger" clinic. She was a social activist who started the first birth control clinic in 1916 in Brooklyn. and eventually "Planned Parenthood". But I guess Catholics didn't run to those clinics at the time that Katie got pregnant. Katie was a very conservative character. This shows why she moved so much when the neighbors got nosy. I will try to finish book four this weekend. Aloha friend

Hello friends, I know some of you are messaging me with your thoughts. Right now, Denise and Jack are in this group, so thank you. I want to finish the book by the end of May because I'm leaving on a jet plane in June lol. I'll try to give a summary at the end of the weekend. Aloha