Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Scribner (2004), Edition: Reprint, 432 pages
Description
This New York Times bestseller intimately depicts urban life in a gripping book that slips behind cold statistics and sensationalism to reveal the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour. In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances--Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar--Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy Geor≥ Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations--as girls become mothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation--LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member AlisonY
Random Family was written over 10 years by LeBlanc who immersed herself in the lives of an extended family of Puerto Ricans living in serious poverty in the Bronx. As a non-fiction book this is a little old now in relation to it's subject matter (written in 2003, chronicling from 1985 to 2000), but
As an immersive piece of fly-on-the-wall piece of journalism (LeBlanc was trusted and welcomed into the lives of those she chronicled), this book is so affecting because of the extended length of time the author spent with her subjects. We don't just read about the 'whats' in their lives - by really getting under the hood of their world we start to understand a little more about their 'whys' in terms of bad choices made.
At its heart this is a story about abject poverty in an area overrun by crime. Depressingly, although each generation wants better for their children than their own upbringing, the cycle gets endlessly repeated again and again. Young mothers (14, 15, 16) end up with large families from different fathers while they're still adolescents themselves. Families typically have no firm roofs over their heads, drifting between small, rundown apartments belonging to extended family members that often have multiple adults and children already living in them. Adults most usually are unemployed or ensconced in the drug trade. Addictions are the norm, child molestation is common but not dwelled on (there are so many adults on the scene figuring out the culprit is often near to impossible), and kids are generally neglected by their families and schools despite good intentions. Young girls typically end up bearing the brunt of the work in bringing up their younger siblings (before starting motherhood themselves), and young boys - lacking guidance from fathers who are usually not involved in their upbringing and typically in jail by their late teens or murdered - eventually get into trouble on the streets, with tough attitudes and uncontrolled anger leading quickly to involvement in gangs, drugs and serious crime.
LeBlanc started writing this novel after following the trial of notorious young drug kingpin Boy George, who, before being sent down for life, was living the high life with Bentleys, jewellery, furs and beautiful women. One of those girls was Jessica, a knockout girl from a poor slum in the Bronx, and it's starting with Jessica that LeBlanc weaves this true story. Within 15 years, Jessica will have gone from rags to riches to a 10 year prison sentence back to rags, becoming a mother of 5 and grandmother of 1 in that same period. We also follow the story of her brother Cesar and his inevitable spiral into crime, and that of Coco, mother to 2 of Cesar's children who extracts herself from the Bronx but ultimately can't escape the grinding poverty that keeps her stuck in the same cycle as previous generations.
As a white, privileged reader, many of the life choices made seem utterly crazy - more babies when they can't cope with the ones they already have, money windfalls (from robberies or insurance claims) frittered away within weeks. However, LeBlanc is pretty successful by the end of the book in helping us understand that when living in this level of extreme poverty, amid everyday violence and dysfunction, there are few support structures, few reliable people to guide or help, and few opportunities to do the right thing when the day-to-day grind is like quicksand.
This is not a book of hope and light at the end of the tunnel - it is a book of stark realism about those living in the poorest sectors of society.
Were it written today, I wonder would LeBlanc be accused of writing a story that is not hers to tell. I think in this case that would be an unfair argument. In researching Random Family she spent a significantly long time immersed in her characters' lives, and it's doubtful that any of her characters would ever have been in a situation privileged enough to have been able to write their story themselves.
5 stars - thoroughly engrossing, albeit incredibly tragic.
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no matter - it's still incredibly powerful stuff.As an immersive piece of fly-on-the-wall piece of journalism (LeBlanc was trusted and welcomed into the lives of those she chronicled), this book is so affecting because of the extended length of time the author spent with her subjects. We don't just read about the 'whats' in their lives - by really getting under the hood of their world we start to understand a little more about their 'whys' in terms of bad choices made.
At its heart this is a story about abject poverty in an area overrun by crime. Depressingly, although each generation wants better for their children than their own upbringing, the cycle gets endlessly repeated again and again. Young mothers (14, 15, 16) end up with large families from different fathers while they're still adolescents themselves. Families typically have no firm roofs over their heads, drifting between small, rundown apartments belonging to extended family members that often have multiple adults and children already living in them. Adults most usually are unemployed or ensconced in the drug trade. Addictions are the norm, child molestation is common but not dwelled on (there are so many adults on the scene figuring out the culprit is often near to impossible), and kids are generally neglected by their families and schools despite good intentions. Young girls typically end up bearing the brunt of the work in bringing up their younger siblings (before starting motherhood themselves), and young boys - lacking guidance from fathers who are usually not involved in their upbringing and typically in jail by their late teens or murdered - eventually get into trouble on the streets, with tough attitudes and uncontrolled anger leading quickly to involvement in gangs, drugs and serious crime.
LeBlanc started writing this novel after following the trial of notorious young drug kingpin Boy George, who, before being sent down for life, was living the high life with Bentleys, jewellery, furs and beautiful women. One of those girls was Jessica, a knockout girl from a poor slum in the Bronx, and it's starting with Jessica that LeBlanc weaves this true story. Within 15 years, Jessica will have gone from rags to riches to a 10 year prison sentence back to rags, becoming a mother of 5 and grandmother of 1 in that same period. We also follow the story of her brother Cesar and his inevitable spiral into crime, and that of Coco, mother to 2 of Cesar's children who extracts herself from the Bronx but ultimately can't escape the grinding poverty that keeps her stuck in the same cycle as previous generations.
As a white, privileged reader, many of the life choices made seem utterly crazy - more babies when they can't cope with the ones they already have, money windfalls (from robberies or insurance claims) frittered away within weeks. However, LeBlanc is pretty successful by the end of the book in helping us understand that when living in this level of extreme poverty, amid everyday violence and dysfunction, there are few support structures, few reliable people to guide or help, and few opportunities to do the right thing when the day-to-day grind is like quicksand.
This is not a book of hope and light at the end of the tunnel - it is a book of stark realism about those living in the poorest sectors of society.
Were it written today, I wonder would LeBlanc be accused of writing a story that is not hers to tell. I think in this case that would be an unfair argument. In researching Random Family she spent a significantly long time immersed in her characters' lives, and it's doubtful that any of her characters would ever have been in a situation privileged enough to have been able to write their story themselves.
5 stars - thoroughly engrossing, albeit incredibly tragic.
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LibraryThing member marysargent
A remarkable book. Nonfiction that reads like a novel about Latinos growing up in the Bronx, written by a reporter who hung out with them for over ten years, people who, she says "opened their lives" to her. However, she is never a presence in the telling of these events, there is no "I"
Unlike most novels, however, it doesn't have a beginning and an end, or a plot; it just starts at one point (in the mid-eighties when sister and brother, Jessica and Caesar, were teenagers) and ends ten years later, when everyone is ten years older and many, many things have happened but you know many more things will just keep happening. There are other major characters and many secondary ones, sometimes hard to keep track of, boyfriends, boyfriends' other girlfriends, boyfriends' other children, the mothers and their boyfriends and the aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and friends and friends of friends and the families that get patched together in their attempts to take care of children and each other and to survive.
But there are no novelistic techniques, like setting the scenes, lengthy descriptions, no visible artfulness. It just reads like facts, facts, facts. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. However, don't be fooled: this is good writing. Here's an example:
For Jessica, love was the most interesting place to go and beauty was the ticket. She gavitated toward the enterprising boys, the boys with money, who were mostly the ones dealing drugs—purposeful boys who pushed out of the bodega's smudged doors as if they were stepping into a party . . .
I felt I got to know them, admired them for their stamina, their enterprise, their creativity and intelligence, was upset with them for their short sightedness, foolishness and their carelessness and sometimes, their cruelty, was incredulous at the hardships they endured and the fact that they did endure them, and in the end, heartbroken at their probable futures.
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narrator.Unlike most novels, however, it doesn't have a beginning and an end, or a plot; it just starts at one point (in the mid-eighties when sister and brother, Jessica and Caesar, were teenagers) and ends ten years later, when everyone is ten years older and many, many things have happened but you know many more things will just keep happening. There are other major characters and many secondary ones, sometimes hard to keep track of, boyfriends, boyfriends' other girlfriends, boyfriends' other children, the mothers and their boyfriends and the aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and friends and friends of friends and the families that get patched together in their attempts to take care of children and each other and to survive.
But there are no novelistic techniques, like setting the scenes, lengthy descriptions, no visible artfulness. It just reads like facts, facts, facts. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. However, don't be fooled: this is good writing. Here's an example:
For Jessica, love was the most interesting place to go and beauty was the ticket. She gavitated toward the enterprising boys, the boys with money, who were mostly the ones dealing drugs—purposeful boys who pushed out of the bodega's smudged doors as if they were stepping into a party . . .
I felt I got to know them, admired them for their stamina, their enterprise, their creativity and intelligence, was upset with them for their short sightedness, foolishness and their carelessness and sometimes, their cruelty, was incredulous at the hardships they endured and the fact that they did endure them, and in the end, heartbroken at their probable futures.
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LibraryThing member gillis.sarah
I had to read this book for a class I took during my first year of college. I didn't expect to like it at first, but then I began to read and couldn't put the book down. The author spent years living among the subjects of this book and gathering research for it and it shows. The book is detailed,
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comprehensive, and manages to bring the reader as close to the reality of the characters' lives as possible. It is heart-wrenching, and it manages to raise some great and interesting questions about our country's economy and policies. I finished this book with a new perspective on class in America, and an interest to learn more. Show Less
LibraryThing member LadyHax
Initially, I had difficulty getting into this book. The style, at the very beginning, was bare reportage. It felt like I was being hit with a barrage of names and events, with no analysis and narrative (as I would expect from this kind of non-fiction). But I was pulled into the lives of these
Although I was drawn into this world, I was also frustrated by it. Even knowing how to look at these lives from a sociological perspective, I wanted to do nothing more than grab each of the characters (I use this term meaning no disrespect to the real individuals, nor am I suggesting that they are caricatured) and tell them to use a condom, to go to school, to act in ways that would stop the vicious cycle in which they seemed trapped. My frustration was also directed at the bureaucratic and political system, which tries to help on the one hand but completely fails at it on the other. Ultimately, however, I did find there was some hope, even as my heart sank at the pronouncement of Serena's teen pregnancy. Or perhaps I need there to be hope.
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people, and LeBlanc actually teases out the nuances of their lives more and more as the book progresses, and she lapses into greater poetry and analysis as the mounting experiences of the characters force an acknowledgement and investigation of the complexity of the social milieu in which they exist.Although I was drawn into this world, I was also frustrated by it. Even knowing how to look at these lives from a sociological perspective, I wanted to do nothing more than grab each of the characters (I use this term meaning no disrespect to the real individuals, nor am I suggesting that they are caricatured) and tell them to use a condom, to go to school, to act in ways that would stop the vicious cycle in which they seemed trapped. My frustration was also directed at the bureaucratic and political system, which tries to help on the one hand but completely fails at it on the other. Ultimately, however, I did find there was some hope, even as my heart sank at the pronouncement of Serena's teen pregnancy. Or perhaps I need there to be hope.
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LibraryThing member bnbookgirl
loved this book. heartbreaking. great insight into the life of families in the Bronx. i would recommend this to anyone who likes gritty non fiction.
LibraryThing member lizusa4444
I loved this book - it is so rich with detail that one becomes compelled to find out more about the main characters. Should be mandatory reading for any sociology class dealing with social issues like poverty, teen pregnancy, drug use, absentee fathers,
LibraryThing member goldiebear
This book fascinated me. It took me a very long time to read, because it was so intense. I like the author's style of writing by the fact that she referred to everyone by name and not pronouns. Because there are so many players in the book I know I would be utterly confused if she didn't state
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people's names. This book is a true family saga, even though it reads like fiction. I am glad LeBlanc chose to write it this way, instead of first person. I think it makes it more credible in a way. LeBlanc dedicated something like 12 years of her life working on this book and immersing herself with these people. It's amazing to think about. It shines a lot of light on the social service system in New York. I would like to say this book made book made me sad or angry -- but it didn't. I am very interested in social work as a profession and this book made me feel even more passionate about it. Show Less
LibraryThing member bellakt2
This book was heartbreaking and amazing. Definitely a must read.
LibraryThing member carmarie
I found that this book made me really happy. Happy that I wasn't any of these people or their children. I know it was a biography of there lives and that part I found fascinating, but did anyone learn anything? DId anyone come out with any knowledge? Not that I know of, and I would really be
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intrigued to see what happens to the children and how they grow up, or a where are they now thing. It mainly seemed to be the same sad story over and over again. Show Less
LibraryThing member gsatell
Interesting book. It gets kind of repetitive and drags on...but I guess that's part of the point.
LibraryThing member kipp15
stark, realistic, true rendering of inner ciyty drug kifr
LibraryThing member turbojenn
gripping, horrifying and desperately sad.
LibraryThing member everly
One of the saddest books I've ever read.
LibraryThing member nluvwithx
Excellent read that depicts life in the Bronx. Adrian did a wonderful job researching lifestyles, income values, and family. I am familiar with the neighborhoods as well as some of the people mentioned in the book. I am glad that someone was finally brave enough to put on paper . The media version
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of inner=city life is raunchy and heartless. These are everyday folks trying to make a living the best way the can under the destructive circumstances which they were ascribed. In the in the longer generations want to experience life in a positive light and not have their offspring tainted by societal and economic woes. Show Less
LibraryThing member PamelaReads
A true story of poverty, addiction, babies having babies, and the vicious cycle that all of this perpetuated for a couple of families in the Bronx during the ‘80s. Although the book focused on two families, this was basically an ethnographic study that could have been dissected from any project
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in North America, at any time in the last five or six decades. Show Less
LibraryThing member Edith1
Interesting book, highly readable in an almost gossipy way, about a (very) extended family in the Bronx, and their neighbors and other entourage. Poor people all, not very well educated, and mostly reliant on each other and on welfare to survive. The author followed these people for eleven years,
Almost everyone has a rough idea of what it must be like to grow up in a ghetto environment with drugs and crime all around you, and how hard it is to get away from it. But you might think that if someone growing up there made an effort, they might be able to escape or attain a better life for themselves and their children. The author of this book did a good job of showing how hard that really is in practice. How even people who don't want to get in trouble and do everything they can to stay on the right path might get in trouble despite their efforts. Why people who decide they want to have no more kids, because they have too many already and cannot support them and care for them, end up having more kids anyway. Why it is that mothers can't keep their daughters from getting pregnant at 16, why they can't keep them in school, and why they rarely manage to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time.
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and wrote a book describing in quite extraordinary detail how their lives develop during those years.Almost everyone has a rough idea of what it must be like to grow up in a ghetto environment with drugs and crime all around you, and how hard it is to get away from it. But you might think that if someone growing up there made an effort, they might be able to escape or attain a better life for themselves and their children. The author of this book did a good job of showing how hard that really is in practice. How even people who don't want to get in trouble and do everything they can to stay on the right path might get in trouble despite their efforts. Why people who decide they want to have no more kids, because they have too many already and cannot support them and care for them, end up having more kids anyway. Why it is that mothers can't keep their daughters from getting pregnant at 16, why they can't keep them in school, and why they rarely manage to hold down a job for more than a few weeks at a time.
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LibraryThing member TanyaTomato
True stories of growing up in the Bronx. The culture is so different it was hard to relate, but interesting to read about.
LibraryThing member WinterFox
How do you approach reading a book that you expect to be really depressing? Let me give you an example: this book, Random Family, was pitched to me as a non-fiction tale following two women over the course of a generation, from when they're teenagers through when their kids are teenagers, living in
I know, this sounds like the sort of book you want to just run out and read, right? And it really is. It's not that the description there is wrong. It's that it's too reductive. This book was engrossing, interesting, thought-provoking, and humanizing - even despite the overlay of desperation and depression that is certainly a part of it.
The story does indeed follow two women, Jessica and Coco, who live in the same neighborhood in the Bronx. The book starts out following Jessica more, and focuses more on Coco as she becomes interested in Jessica's brother, Cesar. Each of them is the product of a broken home, gets involved with criminals, has multiple kids by multiple parents, etc. That side of the story is pretty depressing, sure.
There's a lot of hope to the story, and a lot of attempt to struggle to improve, though. To make things happier for their kids, to provide a better life, to work some way out - these are the goals. Jessica and Coco, and really, everyone around them, make good choices some small amount of the time, and bad choices the rest of it, and unfortunately, it seems like you really need to make the right choice every time and have good luck to get out of the situation, and even if they know approaches - how to go homeless for a while to get better housing, how to move around to maximize your chances, etc. - the luck isn't perfect, and the ties to family are too strong to really escape.
There's a ton more to say about this book, all sorts of points to think from, about a kind of life that I've never had or probably never really could have imagined. LeBlanc's prose is clean and non-judgmental, and she had all the access she needed to tell the story properly. Not judging these people gives the book the impact it has; you can see their hopes and you can see their problems presented in an even-handed light. In the end, you feel worst for the kids, of which there are quite a lot, but then, at the outset of the story, Jessica, Coco, Jessica's brother and Coco's boyfriend Cesar, etc. were mostly kids, too.
Actually, in a sense, I feel worst for one of the secondary characters, Milagros, who was the best friend of Jessica's first baby's father. She decries relationships with men, doesn't want to have kids, and just wants to be independent, and because of the ties in the community she has, ends up with a life that she really couldn't have wanted, even if she makes a lot of the right choices for herself.
What it comes down to, then, is that this story speaks powerfully to the stickiness of poverty and its culture. There are no shortcuts out, and everything can drag you back in. The criminals have the flashy money and the easier life, it seems, but then they get sent to prison and are gone. Abuse is rampant, both physical and sexual, of children and adults, and then the victims have to live with that forever. The system set up to help them seems arbitrary, and has a hard time accommodating single mothers with multiple kids by different fathers, which almost all of these families are. Not having money means skimping on everything, but you need to look right to show poverty isn't grinding you down, so you buy the name brands and the pretty clothes and then flail for everything else. Whenever there is money, you have all sorts of ties to pay back to your family and friends - and there are all sorts of connections - and it seems gone within an instant.
This book really powerfully gets across to me the power of boredom, though. Good choices could be made more easily, but there's no access to a lot of the resources needed to fix that, and where there are, there's still awful, crushing boredom. So getting in fights is better than being bored, or hooking up with someone you shouldn't is better than just being bored, or getting high is better than just doing nothing. So many of the choices seem driven by just not having anything else apparent they can do, and that's what's ultimately the hardest to read.
So: yes, when you approach a book that seems this depressing, it can be hard, but something, there's a lot more there than the first description you hear. A lot more to make you think, and a lot more to life than just the hardships. These are real people, you can feel it, and there are real lessons to be learned. No wonder this got so many accolades. I very highly recommend this one.
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the Bronx and then in upstate New York, in poverty, and shows their attempts and ultimate failures to break out of the situation they find themselves in.I know, this sounds like the sort of book you want to just run out and read, right? And it really is. It's not that the description there is wrong. It's that it's too reductive. This book was engrossing, interesting, thought-provoking, and humanizing - even despite the overlay of desperation and depression that is certainly a part of it.
The story does indeed follow two women, Jessica and Coco, who live in the same neighborhood in the Bronx. The book starts out following Jessica more, and focuses more on Coco as she becomes interested in Jessica's brother, Cesar. Each of them is the product of a broken home, gets involved with criminals, has multiple kids by multiple parents, etc. That side of the story is pretty depressing, sure.
There's a lot of hope to the story, and a lot of attempt to struggle to improve, though. To make things happier for their kids, to provide a better life, to work some way out - these are the goals. Jessica and Coco, and really, everyone around them, make good choices some small amount of the time, and bad choices the rest of it, and unfortunately, it seems like you really need to make the right choice every time and have good luck to get out of the situation, and even if they know approaches - how to go homeless for a while to get better housing, how to move around to maximize your chances, etc. - the luck isn't perfect, and the ties to family are too strong to really escape.
There's a ton more to say about this book, all sorts of points to think from, about a kind of life that I've never had or probably never really could have imagined. LeBlanc's prose is clean and non-judgmental, and she had all the access she needed to tell the story properly. Not judging these people gives the book the impact it has; you can see their hopes and you can see their problems presented in an even-handed light. In the end, you feel worst for the kids, of which there are quite a lot, but then, at the outset of the story, Jessica, Coco, Jessica's brother and Coco's boyfriend Cesar, etc. were mostly kids, too.
Actually, in a sense, I feel worst for one of the secondary characters, Milagros, who was the best friend of Jessica's first baby's father. She decries relationships with men, doesn't want to have kids, and just wants to be independent, and because of the ties in the community she has, ends up with a life that she really couldn't have wanted, even if she makes a lot of the right choices for herself.
What it comes down to, then, is that this story speaks powerfully to the stickiness of poverty and its culture. There are no shortcuts out, and everything can drag you back in. The criminals have the flashy money and the easier life, it seems, but then they get sent to prison and are gone. Abuse is rampant, both physical and sexual, of children and adults, and then the victims have to live with that forever. The system set up to help them seems arbitrary, and has a hard time accommodating single mothers with multiple kids by different fathers, which almost all of these families are. Not having money means skimping on everything, but you need to look right to show poverty isn't grinding you down, so you buy the name brands and the pretty clothes and then flail for everything else. Whenever there is money, you have all sorts of ties to pay back to your family and friends - and there are all sorts of connections - and it seems gone within an instant.
This book really powerfully gets across to me the power of boredom, though. Good choices could be made more easily, but there's no access to a lot of the resources needed to fix that, and where there are, there's still awful, crushing boredom. So getting in fights is better than being bored, or hooking up with someone you shouldn't is better than just being bored, or getting high is better than just doing nothing. So many of the choices seem driven by just not having anything else apparent they can do, and that's what's ultimately the hardest to read.
So: yes, when you approach a book that seems this depressing, it can be hard, but something, there's a lot more there than the first description you hear. A lot more to make you think, and a lot more to life than just the hardships. These are real people, you can feel it, and there are real lessons to be learned. No wonder this got so many accolades. I very highly recommend this one.
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LibraryThing member jessicahandler
Literary nonfiction of the first order.
LibraryThing member allison.sivak
I read this right after The Warmth of Other Suns, and so I found the voice to be less personal and warm and out-front than in that book.
LibraryThing member satyridae
Riveting portrait of a family in the Bronx ghetto where they live. The author became part of this family for 10 years, and her immersion gives this book a verisimilitude that is often lacking in less well-researched books I've read. It was a difficult read but a fascinating one.
LibraryThing member bookwormteri
Heartbreaking and fascinating. How much drug culture pervades some inner cities and affects every aspect of life. I can't believe that these girls have so many kids and so young and so little education to be prepared for anything. It's just sad. But a great read.
LibraryThing member mjlivi
An incredible portrait of the joint impacts of poverty and the drug war in the US. The author walks a fine line between journalism and voyeurism at times, but the simple act of telling the in-depth stories of these families making ends meet is tremendously confronting and powerful. And, to be
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honest, a bit dispiriting. Show Less
LibraryThing member deldevries
well written, but I'm just not interested in the story and the characters (people). This doesn't fit my criteria for one of the 100 New Classics.
LibraryThing member JenLynnKnox
Not exactly what I expected from the reviews, but its a good story.
Subjects
Awards
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — General Nonfiction — 2003)
The Economist Best Books (2003.10)
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (Nonfiction — 2004)
Street Literature Book Award (2004)
Borders Original Voices (2004)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2003-01-28
Physical description
432 p.; 5.5 inches
ISBN
0743254430 / 9780743254434