Title Significance

Leaving Dirty Jersey is a memoir written by Salant who talks about his life when he was under the influence of drugs. Jimmy, the narrator and main character, struggles to stay away from drugs. This was a problem until his parents found out and tried to help him. Jimmy’s parents then send him to a rehabilitation center called Getting Straight for Life. The center in which Jimmy is sent to is located outside New Jersey, so Jimmy has to leave New Jersey to get clean which refers back to the title Leaving Dirty Jersey. After graduating GSL Jimmy doesn’t stay clean for long. He moves to Riverside with his friend Luke then he becomes involved in drugs. Jimmy thought that where you came from meant everything so he described New Jersey as a drug infested place from his experiences. Many convicts represented their hometown by getting a tattoo like Manny: “He had massive biceps, and the word ‘Fontana’ was printed across his chest in thick block lettering—a conspicuous tattoo that, as he would later explain to me, he’d gotten in prison to show everybody that he was representing his hometown”(201). Just like Manny Jimmy wanted to represent where he was from, he wanted to make himself look tough: “She knew the artist, and her present, I suppose, was the cheap price I paid: eighty dollars to have the words ‘Dirty Jersey’ tattooed in an Old English Script inside my left forearm” (58). Jimmy referred to his home in New Jersey as Dirty Jersey: “I told him I’d learned all about respect back home in Dirty Jersey” (201). He might have referred to it this way because New Jersey is the first place he started actually doing drugs. Usually when people decide not to do drugs anymore then they are considered to be clean. New Jersey, according to Jimmy in this memoir, is the place where there are lots of drugs making it not clean which refers back to the title Leaving Dirty Jersey. Leaving Dirty Jersey pertains to the pot, the character and the whole story in many ways.

Word count: 350