Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, And Coming Of Age In The Bronx (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a 2.5 stars. Because it doesn't stink. But I really, really didn't like reading it. In fact I nearly re-shelved it after 100 pages, which I never, ever do. But it is no fun. It is so hard to gain any traction when there's not much structure. So boring, and it took me forever because there's so little story here.I guess it is only reporting, which means very little narrative of any kind. At all. Facts, description, retrospective statements. But I think it thinks there's a readable story, and no. I saw a review that says it reads like a synopsis for a book rather than a book, and yes.I finally felt somewhat interested halfway through, and once I understood that the book would last as long as the family members' prison terms (ha, ha... it... almost is a joke) there was a bit of a big picture that I did want to see complete. But it's difficult to like. I related to Coco in the beginning, but by the end her failures to act and utter lack of resources are tough to endure.But: both Jessica and Cesar post-prison are pretty amazing, and it's nice to feel proud of good people. Their oldest kids are also kind of amazing. Actually, Mercedes is THE MOST AMAZING. Five stars for Mercedes. (Who is now doing pretty well, though it's strange there's so little follow-up information for these people on the internet.)I couldn't anticipate the author's style: often, the pace of the details indicated that suspense was building, a scene carefully set because something important was about to be relayed, but it never worked that way. So while the level of detail was often excruciating -- do I want to know whether the elevator came, or where this pair of sunglasses came from? -- I wanted to know much more. There was opportunity for the author to ask for explanations of big questions in the words of the subjects, but it's not that kind of book.But I would have loved to hear them talk about, for example, cultural gender divides (can you explain why having a son is important to you?), or why the families don't speak Spanish at home (how many generations are they from Puerto Rico, and how is that different from other Spanish-speaking communities in NYC?). Is it really useful to just repeat what we already know? Less, sometimes? We come closest in the chapter when Coco despairs over teenage girls -- her boyfriend is dating one, and her niece and daughter are becoming some. That was almost really good writing. Pretty close.Is that just really great reporting I'm complaining about? I guess there's a difference between great reporting and great book-writing. I guess a really, really big one. I FEEL BAD, though. This is a bestseller; LeBlanc received a Genius Grant. And it is... fine. But it is no great read. And I just don't see it as a "Middlemarch of the underclass".Um, and this is kind of stupid, but I hated the obsession with the phrase "to break the night", an idiom for staying up all night. I've never heard that before, and it was super annoying that people "broke night" three times a page. Just, gah.I picked up my copy at the closing month sale at Skyline Books, on the New York City shelf. This is another I read off of a best NY books list. It's a thoughtful inclusion, but I didn't find it very exciting.
Random Family is one of those rare books that I feel sad to have finished. There were many days when I only read 10 or 15 pages, just so that I could put off saying goodbye to the subjects of the story I'd grown so close to for a little while longer. This book sat on my desk at home for nearly a year before i ever picked it up, just because I didn't know what to expect from it. Now that I have turned its final page, I know that I will cherish the time I spent reading it for the rest of my life. Perhaps more than any of the young people profiled in this book, Coco's story is the most engrossing. With each page, the reader shares her struggles, her hopes and her disappointments. The reader hopes that she will get through each difficult situation and that maybe she can finally get ahead but, as the book progresses, even cautious optimism seems foolish. Coco and her family can only hope to get by. What gives this book most strength is the amount of time -over a decade- that Adrian Nicole Leblanc spent with the family. This allows the reader to observe each of the story's subjects experiencing the joys and optimism of their youth. Over the next decade, the harshness of their poverty steals their hope. Life becomes a constant battle to get by, to have a place to stay, to find enough food. The struggle changes them immensely, and they lose pieces of their person-hood. In their youth, Coco and Jessica could distract themselves from their problems by dressing cute and smiling as boys complimented them when they passed by on the street. However, the intrusion of adulthood and the burden of impossible to meet responsibilities eventually made even those small reprieves meaningless to them. The young men in the story, Boy George..Ceasar..Frankie..Rocco..Wishbone, struggle against traditional conceptions of masculinity. They rebel against the humiliations of being unable to be providers, and they are each punished for the inadequacy poverty has forced upon them. Leblanc perfectly captures all of the complicated dynamics that motivate each of the young people. The result is something between Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever and Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives. As a writer and a journalism student, this book has inspired me more than any non-fiction I've ever read, and I will never be the same.
What do You think about Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, And Coming Of Age In The Bronx (2004)?
I had to go to Amazon and copy word for word their synopsis because I strongly urge everyone to read this book and I did not want to do it a disservice by my meager way with words so this excerpt is from Amazon.comPoliticians rail about welfare queens, crack babies and deadbeat dads, but what do they know about the real struggle it takes to survive being poor? Journalist LeBlanc spent some 10 years researching and interviewing one extended family-mother Lourdes, daughter Jessica, daughter-in-law Coco and all their boyfriends, children and in-laws-from the Bronx to Troy, N.Y., in and out of public housing, emergency rooms, prisons and courtrooms. LeBlanc's close listening produced this extraordinary book, a rare look at the world from the subjects' point of view. Readers learn that prison is just an extension of the neighborhood, a place most men enter and a rare few leave. They learn the realities of welfare: the myriad of misdemeanors that trigger reduction or termination of benefits, only compounding a desperate situation.They see teenaged drug dealers with incredible organizational and financial skills, 13-year-old girls having babies to keep their boyfriends interested, older women reminiscing about the "heavenly time" they spent in a public hospital's psychiatric ward and incarcerated men who find life's first peace and quiet in solitary confinement. More than anything, LeBlanc shows how demanding poverty is. Her prose is plain and unsentimental, blessedly jargon-free, and includidng street talk only when one of her subjects wants to "conversate." This fine work deserves attention from policy makers and general readers alike.
—UpstateNYgal
The author started this project intending to write about Boy George who had been arrested at the age of 23 after becoming a millionare by dealing heroin. Along the way she ran into Jessica one of his girlfriends and decided she wanted to write about her life instead. LeBlanc followed Jessica and her extended family for twelve years mainly focusing on Jessica and her sister in law Coco.If you don't know poverty then after reading this book you will. This book gives you a better understanding of how generation after generation remains in abject poverty. Dreams usually never open their sleepy eyes in the ghetto. Don't understand what I mean by that? Read this book and you will.I'm actually really impressed that an author wrote about regular struggles of the poor in the US. Not only did she tell Jessica, and Coco's stories, but in telling them she told of so many other young mothers stories in ghettos big and small all across the US.I personally know what it is to live in the big city ghetto, and in a small town ghetto. I know a lot of the struggles these people go through on a very personal level. Still I found myself willing these people to make other choices such as , get on birth control, take that apartment, and get that education. I saw so many people I know in these two womens stories that this book will stay with me for a very long time.This book just goes to show you that everyones life is a story, and it was really interesting to follow the lives of these two young women for so many years.
—✟Sabrina Rutter✟
Part novel, part anthropological study. Overlapping narratives that occasionally dovetailed together. It's totally confusing at first (aunts, uncles, mamis, papis, abuelitas, tias, etc...plus some random friend named Milagros that somehow ends up taking care of everyone else's kids.) Kind of like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", but about the cycles of 3 generations of Bronx residents. Basically describes cyclical poverty in the Bronx and Troy, NY. Depicts the difficulty of poverty, crime, and jail time on parenting and marriage. Also shows the challenges of raising children from multiple fathers/mothers, all in the chaotic, overstimulating ghetto. Kids are often kind of just split apart or shipped off to family members or friends who are having more luck stretching their welfare checks. As a result, abuse is common because no one can really keep track of who's watching the kids. Then when the parents hit a streak of better financial luck and/or start making money from dealing drugs, ego intervenes and the parents want their kids back to make a go of raising all or some of them, only to get bored or parent ineffectively (except for Coco, who has a heart of gold). Lifelong heroes and trusted family members fall victim to drug abuse, crime, and betrayal. Was difficult to bond with characters initially because of their reckless lifestyles; it's hard to approve of, or even relate to, some of them. Even if you find yourself relating, it's hard to not judge them. Still, it becomes easier as the book goes on. Nonetheless, the investment in them as protagonists occurs when you're so far into the book and they've just managed to stay alive so far. You figure they've made it so far, so you start rooting for them. Nothing I haven't already known or seen, but an interesting book anyway. This is currently being read in NYC public schools, and I think that's a good thing.
—Maria
