Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age - Book Report/Review Example

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age Adrian Nicole LeBlanc was born in Leominister, Massachusetts. She is an American journalist whose works mainly focus on the marginalized members in the community, such as prostitutes, adolescents living in poverty, women in prison, and the homeless among others. LeBlanc is best known for her award-winning non-fiction novel Random Family. The book talks about the struggles of women as well as their family as they deal with babies, drugs, and love in the Bronx. For her exemplary works, she has received notable awards like the MacArthur Fellowship, Bunting Fellowship, Soros Media Fellowship from the Open Society, Margolis Award, Lettre Ulysses Award, and Holtzbrinck Fellowship. Adrian studied at the Smith College, Oxford University, and Yale University. She has worked with the Seventeen Magazine as an editor and is also a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine. Besides, most of her work has been published in the Esquire, The New Yorker, Spin, The Village Voice, and The Source. Currently, LeBlanc resides in Manhattan. Other publications by Adrian LeBlanc, include Gang Girl: When Manny’s Locked-Up (August, 1994), Landing From the Sky (The New Yorker, April 23, 2000), When the Man of the House is in the Big House (Cover, January, 2003), and Sidelines (2005) (Boynton 227). The book, Random Family: Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx was published in 2003 and studies the urban life. The author uses real life characters that she spent an enormous amount of time with that resulted in her being awarded a master’s degree at the Yale Law School. She had a faltering long-term relationship with the subjects as portrayed in the characters of the story: Boy George, Jessica, Cesar, and Coco. The author has been writing on issues affecting the marginalized persons in the society such as women in prison. The characters dealt in drugs, committed murder, were incarcerated, fell in love and had sex, got pregnant at an early age, and struggled to feed their children. To that effect, the book discusses the struggles of poor urban women and youths in prison due to drugs and family matters. Adrian LeBlanc spent 11 years recording the big events of the agonies, every day on-goings, and small-time joys of the Random Family. As a result, she became part of the research. The novel is based on real-life characters on their mixed-up narrative, self-deception, and memory creating a coherent book. The story is on poverty- and drug-laced world of two Puerto Rican girls, Coco and Jessica. Jessica navigates the complex life of being involved romantically with a successful heroine dealer who was later sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, she gets jailed too, has a romantic affair with a guard, and eventually sues the prison for sexual abuse. She is released from prison and commences to mend her relationship with her children. The other relationship of Coco and Cesar survives for the nine years Cesar was incarceration. Poverty is major challenge faced by the urban youth. In the opening paragraph, LeBlanc (8) argues that Jessica lived on one of the poorer blocks in the very section of the poor Bronx. The poor neighborhood forms the basis of the youth joining gangs in search of economic stability. This paragraph forms one of the greatest strengths of the book. It shows how close observation yields telling details. Jessica is swept by heroin dealer named Boy George. Jessica is only 19 years of age. Boy George earns $500,000 weekly from his heroin business and on his first date with Jessica he picks her up in a Mercedes-Benz and gives the mother of Jessica some cocaine and $1,000. Soon, Jessica becomes one of Boy Georges many girlfriends. Jessica had dreamt of a king with a maid, and she viewed Boy George as a king (LeBlanc 5-7). Boy George bought her emeralds, diamonds, and unique outfits. She stays in the run-down apartments used for either storing guns or milling heroin. This shows the housing problems that run-away youth drug addicts have. They are unable to get a decent living environment. In the same way, the best option for every Tremont girl is to find any man who can provide pampers as well the occasional $20 bill. This shows the extreme poverty and carefree-life of the American urban youth. Most urban youths are engaged in drugs. The involvement of drugs has permeated in almost everyone’s life in the book. They view the world of narcotics as the only available option. As a result, incarceration is inevitable for the characters. Most of the characters cycle in and out of the prison both for crimes they committed and did not commit. The prison struggles are mirrored by the family struggles outside. The protagonists constantly battle with extreme poverty in addition to navigating through the institutional world. The new conditions of living require compliance to various forms of discipline. From the novel, I also noted that the other problem faced by teenagers in America is abusive relationships. Considering that most youths in the streets use drugs, they are often unable to control their relationship. Boy George warns Jessica by saying, “If I can trust you, I can kill you” (LeBlanc 55). Jessica’s boyfriend threatens her with death and even locks her inside the apartment he had rented for her. However, Jessica is still committed to him to the extent of having a tattoo that reads ‘Jessica loves George.’ It demonstrates the unwavering love Jessica has towards Boy George. In the same way, the other subject, Coco takes up Cesar who is Jessica’s brother. Just like Jessica, Coco has five children with different fathers. However, she is the most admirable character in the novel. She shows to the readers that poverty is nonetheless a life. However, she often robbed local shops and was a petty dealer so as to improve her mother’s household income. In spite of their poverty, the little cash they acquired was spent lavishly on symbols of status. Le Blanc argues that when Coco got $1,734, she purchased a large-screen television arguing that you never know if you will die tomorrow (Valby). The book is authoritative and enthralling. Authored like a documentary, the author makes no judgments with regard to the lives of the characters she presents. There are no statistical analyses, political spins, and blames, as well as solutions. Instead, LeBlanc lets Jessica, Coco, and other subjects make use of their own voices to tell their stories. This leaves the reader as a witness. Nothing is sanitized and glamorized, not the roaches, tars, faulty reasoning, and bad parenting. The hopelessness and alienation of many urban youths, largely as a result of endemic joblessness fuels the violence they engage in. The youths have invested in the code of street stories in order to establish reputation. Most of the urban youths are poorly educated. LeBlanc (27) claims that at 23, Coco never held a job and she scored a fifth-grade level in reading in addition to a sixth-grade in math. Studies have demonstrated that a lack of adequate education pushes the youth to engage in delinquent behavior. Next, teenage pregnancy is a common phenomenon among urban American youth. However, the rate is higher in the single-motherhood households. All women become mothers at very tender ages. Both Jessica and Coco came from single-mother homes and become pregnant at 17 and 15 years, respectively. Oden (34) asserts that daughter from the single-motherhood household are 58% more likely to be married as teenagers. Besides that, 168% more likely to procure a premarital birth in addition to 95% more likely to dissolve their marriages. Equally important, in 2012, the survey carried out by the Department of Justice found out that of the 8000 inmates evaluated, 40% lived with their mothers. According to Harper and McLanahan (369), youths who have grown up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in a detention center as compared to those who come from the traditional two-parent families. As evidenced in the text, Jessica, Boy George, Cesar, and Coco were engaged in criminal activities and came from fatherless homes. Proceeding further, the children are both a source of anguish and pride. It is impossible to cater for their needs in the extreme poverty, but the author uses them as symbols of loves. The author portrays them as symbols of hope for the incarcerated parents. Another issue that affects the urban youth in America is bad parenting. The claims that Tremont was where the fourteen-year-old girls would get pregnant and then leaves their babies with the drug-addicted mothers for them to go clubbing (LeBlanc 73). The teenage mothers are not able to care of the children they give leaving the role to their mothers, who are addicted to drugs. Jessica had three children whom she had parceled out to her friend and mother (Wypijewski). The author shows to the readers the correlation between drugs and teenage pregnancy and their negative effect on the society. More to the point, while in prison Jessica got pregnant with a prison guard. Her other three children were being raised by a friend. Therefore, the readers can easily arrive at a conclusion that the children will someday resemble their mother’s characters in future and the vicious cycle of bad parenting continues. In the Tremont neighborhood, there exists an odd code of the street that suggests more than just a few missing steps of maturity and normalcy. The fathers, sons, and boyfriends peddle drugs in the street. Others are serving time in prison facilities, while others are dead in the city morgue. A macrostructural pattern of disadvantage and limited economic opportunities foster a street culture that is conducive for the development of violence. In 1994, a study by Anderson found out that the structural conditions result in a sense of hopelessness together with cynism in relation to societal rules and their application. As a result, it has led to a street culture that undermines the conventional norms. In the book, LeBlanc demonstrates the manner in which the drugs cartels use violence to carry out their businesses. Stewart and Simons (570) argue that the street violence adopts a street code that is embedded in the wider social context. The code of street stories is developed as a result of the ecological construct in an emergent property of structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods, thus shaping values that influence violence among the adolescents. Most of the characters in the novel were using drugs. Drug peddling in the neighborhood was justified in the event that the boy dealing in drugs assisted his mothers, and the same went for girls. Based on the code of street stories, the author demonstrates the manner in which the characters lived a life of misery and poverty. “Coco…struggled to lock the apartment’s disjointed door” (LeBlanc 34). It shows the poor housing as a challenge for the urban youth. Most of the youths are not able afford decent housing. This shows the social reality of the urban youth in America. The knowledge of the street stories code is largely defensive. Persons who engage in the street culture are personally committed to the code, and they become familiar with it to ensure street efficacy. The code puts greater emphasis on violence. Coco robbed the local shops so as to earn a living. More to the point, Jessica was engaged in violent criminal activities in order to support their lifestyles (Wypijewski). The characters resided in neighborhood where the street culture amplified the violence. In this regard to, the street stories are often centered round violence. As the folks butter themselves with drugs and alcohol, the fathers, boyfriends, and sons ate taken to prison one by one (Valby). The book exerts the fascination of the unflinching, classic documentary. LeBlanc illustrates how the two women, Jessica and Coco developed an array of social identities that were consistent with the street culture so as to manage the threats and demands of the context that was maintained by the drug violence. It has been established that the more violent one’s social identity is, the more street credibility and respect he or she is given among the peers that follow the street culture (Stewart and Simons 569). Boy George and Cesar were violent with an aim of gaining respect in the street. In the ends, they further pushed themselves in the juvenile justice system. To that effect, the book is of special interest to those who view prison as part and parcel of the American social fabric. The book argues that education is one of the ways of getting out of poverty and the ghetto. With increased education opportunities one is able to knowledgeable and skilled in various spheres of life that can be helpful to their lifestyles. The writer is extremely skillful at revealing the unspoken along with unappealing truth. She portrays Bronx as a national sacrificial zone of drug dealing together with imprisonment as the state of New York de facto economic development strategies. LeBlanc demonstrates the collapse of welfare, educational institutions, racial segregation, and miscarriage of justice, in addition to the rot that happens under the shine of the New York renaissance. On the other hand, the book’s weakness is that some terms have been stated in lengthy explanations. This can easily make the reader to get bored while reading the book. Also, the author does not blame the subjects for their fate. In other words, LeBlanc is to some extent condoning the subjects’ behavior. However, the book presents a deeply intimate portrait of the urban poor. In summary, the urban youth in the United States face greater prejudice. The author reports the ugly and static reality of the street. The book has enabled me understand the various aspects of the experiences of urban youth in the American society. They often experience barriers to social opportunities and organizations. LeBlanc writes about social issues affecting the youth, such as prison systems, addiction, public housing, and teen pregnancy that significantly influence the circumstances that she witnessed. The book tries to provide answers to the tough question as to why poor people are more likely to be acquainted with crime and chaos. The prison system has been accepted as part of the society in the maintenance of law and order in the American society. Works Cited Boynton, Robert. The New Journalism, New York: Random House, 2005. p. 227. Print. Harper, Cynthia, and McLanahan, Sara. “Father’s absence and youth incarceration,” Journal of Research on Adolescence 14.1(2004): 369-397. LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx New York: Random House, 2003. Print. Oden, Michael. When Nobody's Home. New York: Author House, 2004. Print. Stewart, Eric and Ronald Simons. "Race, code of the street, and violent deliquency: A multilevel investigation of neighborhood street culture and individual norms of violence." Journal of Criminology 48.2 (2010): 569-605. Valby, Karen. Review: 'Random Family' startling tale. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/02/03/ew.review.book.random.family/>. Web. February 3, 2003. Accessed April 27, 2015. Wypijewski, JoAnn. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/13/featuresreviews.guardianreview24>. Web. 2003. April 26, 2015. Read More