Review: Trying to Discover if Amway Was the Cause of His Family's Poverty
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 22, 2011
There are several things happening in this extended essay by German--he is reporting on his experience investigating Amway, recollecting his father's rough path trying to make it as a writer, and reflecting on his own childhood as well as the ultimate culpability of Amway. I had heard of Amway and had assumed it was something like a pyramid scheme, and when German breaks out the numbers of people it would take for just 13 generations of Amway salespeople to succeed, we immediately see that there simply aren't enough people, let alone interested people, to make the math work. He contrasts the flashy lifestyle and grandiose promises of Jean Valerio, who claims to have built up great wealth via Amway, with his father's destitution, but also contrasts his own disillusionment with Amway with his father's claim that it wasn't the company that was rotten, but some of the people he worked for. Can the two be separated? Is writing just as much of a con game as Amway, which is pretty much what his father suggests?Lurking beneath the surface, I sensed that German was pained at having to look into the darkness of his father's bleakeast, poorest days, sensed by proxy the shame his father felt at having to give up his home and his dreams. Even though his father doesn't feel quite the same, that sense of what might have been is what makes the contrast of German's visit to Valerio's home so striking. He is careful not to paint her as too much of a villain, but more as someone who's invested so much of herself into the idea of what she is saying that she cannot break away enough to hear an opposite kind of story.This is a powerfully personal piece of journalism, and works well in this format.