Book Review: Same Kind of Different As Me
Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Paperback Release Date: 2008
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Same Kind of Different As Me is the story of Ron Hall, a wealthy white art dealer and Denver Moore, a homeless black man that Ron and his wife Deborah befriend.
I read this book because it was a selection for my stay-at-home mom’s book club. It’s definitely not a book I would have picked up on my own, as it has a heavy focus on Evangelical Christian religious doctrine and that’s not really my thing. I even felt kind of duped by this book because the blurb on the book jacket doesn’t mention anything about God or religion; I felt like they were trying to draw in unsuspecting readers who wouldn’t normally read the book. From some of the reviews I read on Goodreads, I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Ron starts out as a snobby, racist and classist jerk of a guy who is convinced to work at a homeless shelter by his selfless and giving wife Deborah. (Why does Deborah put up with this guy? Good question.) Deborah feels that God is telling her that Ron should become friends with Denver, who has a reputation of being the meanest, most stand-offish homeless man at the shelter. Ron loves and trusts his wife so he does what she asks.. At first, it’s clear that Ron thinks he is doing Denver a big favor by even talking to him and that Ron thinks he is inherently better than Denver because he is rich and white. Thankfully, as Ron gets to know Denver, he realizes that he isn’t better than him and that he been judgmental and wrong in his preconceived notions about homeless and black people. We also learn that Denver isn’t really as mean as he seems.
I appreciated how honest Ron was about how he wasn’t the greatest person when he first started working at the mission. I didn’t relate to the heavy-handed religious aspect of the book and found the constant references to prayer monotonous but I did like reading about Denver’s life and the development of his relationship with Ron.
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