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Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx By Adrian Nicole LeBlanc ( Scribner )
Release Date: 2004-01-19
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $14.95
Price: $4.99
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Product Description
In and out of prison, in and out of homes and shelters for the homeless, in and out of employment, romance and poverty - the women and the children compile families, support systems, from whatever material they find at hand, for however long it lasts. The men drift, domineer and disappear. It's absolutely another world, and yet, of course, it's yours, with the bass and treble turned up. There are no authorial intrusions, no judgements, no visible steering and so this story reads like a novel, an old-fashioned novel that is all character, dialogue and plot, albeit one whose subject matter would have made even Mrs Gaskell stutter.
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It was alright..
This story was an ok read. There were too many characters to keep my attention on the storyline. I think this book is a little overrated with all the five star reviews on Amazon. I learned a couple of things about the Bronx and how Puerto Ricans live, but besides that it was just alright.
Rating 3.5 -4.0
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 Excellent!
This is not the genre that I normally read, however, it was written very well and really gives you an inside look to life "on the streets" and the affect that it has on all involved...was same experience as viewing documentary on television. Highly recommend it.
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PAGE TURNER
For me this book was so real, and the characters moved me so much, I wished so much to read more! It almost left me hanging and thinking about their future!
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COCO
One of the girls in this book was a girl I know, it was written really well. I loved the book.
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Anthropological quest ( mesibley )
This story resembles a Richard Price novel, but it is true. It is a nonfiction treatment of the themes of drugs and family connections amidst grating poverty. Spanish drug dealers and their friends jockey to survive the harsh conditions of the street.
Everyone depends upon fluid kinship relationships. Good parenting is premised on keeping children out of the hands of the authorities. For some people incarceration gives them the ability to shape their lives. The telling descriptions of some of the participants makes this both a work of anthropology and a dream of a work for the guidance of policy-makers.
Unfortunately, if an inadequate number of good legal jobs exist, people will resort to suberfuge to maintain self and family. The neighborhood in the Bronx portrayed in the work is an alien world to many of us, one of livery cabs and arranged marriages to overcome immigration hurdles. Girls, even young ones, are called fly.
One of the mothers is caught up in the welfare to work policy. There are disadvantages to trying to support four children on a minimum wage job. Another mother has to learn about motherhood in prison. The readers learn why a young mother would move from the Bronx to Troy seeking housing assistance for her family.
Mental health services alleviate some of the distress of the actors in this book. Even perpetrators of atrociously violent acts emerge in it as likeable. We are indebted to the author for her painstaking reporting.
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