“Bad” neighborhoods are defined as being characterized by “high poverty, unemployment and welfare receipt, few well-educated adults, and many crimes and gangs.” (Google Dictionary) Living and growing up in a bad neighborhood can have a devastating impact on a child’s development. In Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty it takes place in the town of Chicago where there are crimes and drug dealers going on. A kid named Yummy has been influenced by his town to do bad things. By all means, in the graphic novel Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, Yummy is a victim of his circumstances. To begin, Yummy is a victim because of his miserable childhood and the way he has been growing up. One day during class, all the students were talking about Yummy and how he accidentally killed a girl. Everyone was discussing what they knew about Yummy. Roger states, “His daddy was in prison for drugs. And I heard his mama had been arrested 41 times for drugs and prostitution. She was always in and out of jail”. (Neri 21) This shows that as Yummy has been growing up, there are many negative influences around him. From both his parents always being in jail, leads Yummy into doing bad things. Yummy parents were not there to gear him toward the right path. He grew up being in the image of his parents by not making the right choices for himself. With his parents never by his side, it made him feel like he didn’t belong. Parents are supposed to be role models for …show more content…
From his unhappy childhood memories until the way he grew up, Yummy never had his parent’s by his side to support and love him. He was abused and neglected by his parents at a very young age. Also, the environment that Yummy was in led him into making the wrong decisions that he wouldn’t have made, if he had lived in a better environment. Living in a detrimental neighborhood causes harm to a child and lead them onto a wrong path of