A short story “Mines” by Susan Straight will be reviewed. Inmates, wards, imbeciles, children - all are names to describe misdirected young souls who find themselves confined in the local youth correctional center. It's a stone cold and depressing place for Clarette. This facility is a place where kids who make mistakes in life go to serve their time and, most likely, if their path stays the same, they will end up across the street in the Chino Men's Institution . Clarette is a guard at the correctional center; she also has a nephew, Alfonso, who also works at the youth center. Clarette tries to distinguish between her work and her family life. My first thought when reading the story is that this is life. I connected with this story, because the events taking place are events of our current times and we hear and see news about gangs and their rituals every day. Susan Straight wrote the story in 2002, with a general setting, that could have taken any place in any city. Clarette, a woman who works at the youth correctional facility, tries to continue her life as a single mother and full-time correctional officer. Clarette, is a very rounded character and alternates personalities between that of a mother and that of a correctional facility guard throughout the story. As a mother, she sees our young men wasting away in such a stupid place, where these children often fight, sending emotional pain into her already struggling life. As she not only struggles with the everyday situations that arise when she has a family, she also has to go to work and bear witness to her own nephew and his stupidity, which earned her a sentence at the inside the establishment. There are some great visualizations of Ms. Honestly, about her characters in this story. Her descriptions are real... middle of paper... but the arduousness of the work drags her back and affects the lives of her children. Clarette is like many women who work in our society. The battle of raising her children in an environment constantly changing for the worse leads her to take a job she is not extremely happy with in order to survive. She imagines keeping her family strong, educated but not harsh and institutionalized. Clarette must transform from caretaker to caring mother every time she returns or goes to work. The single working mother in a world of struggle. Work Cited Biography. jrank.org. Straight-Susan. 4769. web.Straight, Susan. “The mines.” In Bedford's Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 107-119. Print. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2010. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010. 1. W