The struggles of Derricotte and Hernandez As human beings evolve from infancy to elderly stages in life, times of struggle and hardship continually challenge their kin and personage; as life tests their mental fortitude and survival dexterity. In essays “My Father’s hands” by author Daisy Hernandez, and “Beginning Dialogues” by author Toi Derricotte, life and its whirl wind of ups and downs are expressed and exemplified. Both authors’ upbringings share various similarities on their evolutionary road trip through life. Struggling with hardship and abuse, how both authors’ dealt with their hardships, and how they ultimately survived/overcame these trying events, show similar correlations. Families are customarily impacted by life’s trials as a whole when misfortune strikes, such as the loss of a job, or loved one. Daisy Hernandez and her family luckily did not lose a loved one, but in her essay “My Father’s Hands” she writes of the struggles that accompanied the closing of various factories in the town where Hernandez lived, which resulted in unemployment for her mother and father. Low income from the lack of employment led to very stressful and unsettling times in the author’s household. To add to the destitution, Hernandez’s father was an alcoholic and commonly took his drunken rage (fueled by his suppressed turmoil of not knowing how to provide for his family or how to stay strong) out on her. The lack of work for her father led to a surplus in his drinking habits. “The world was cruel to him, yes, but it was hard for me to be angry and afraid of an abstract idea like “world.” It was easier to be afraid of my father’s hands. Easier to be angry when the blistered and swaying drunk hands slapped me on the back of my head.” (Hernandez, 412). During her mother and fathers unemployment they would try to get a grip on their low income by collecting unemployment, job