Customer Reviews

Dark Dude

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fifteen-year-old, Cuban American Rico Fuentes is a Dark Dude, slang for a light skinned person. Rico is so light skinned he seems white and this causes him trouble in Harlem, both with the black and Hispanic kids in school. Plus, his life seems to be going nowhere. He wants to create comic books with his pal Jimmy, who has discovered the needle and the false joy it brings.

Rico has an old friend, eighteen-year-old Gilberto who wins seventy-five thousand Dollars in the lottery. Gilberto moves to Wisconsin, rents a run down farm for two hundred dollars a month and goes to college. Rico talks Jimmy into running away to Gilberto's farm with him.

And thus Rico's adventure begins. On the road they meet both good and not so good people. In Wisconsin Rico learns that the land of Milk and Honey has some bad people in it as well in this book that advertises itself as a young adult novel, but I'm not so young and I enjoyed every page. Mr. Hijuelos won me over with the first sentence and keep me glued to his story for a whole Saturday. It's not often I read a book in one sitting. I did this one, that's how much I enjoyed it.

Dark Dude is a well-written young adult's novel that is a coming of age story following the adventures of Rico, a very pale Cuban boy from New York City. Never really fitting in with the his darker skinned inner city peers, having a drunk father and stern mother at home, and with his closest friend, Jimmy, becoming a drug addict he decides to leave NYC and take a chance on the state of Wisconsin. Rico takes only his dreams of being a comic book story writer, a suitcase of supplies, and the aforementioned Jimmy, and they hitch their was to his friend Gilberto's farm.

Once in Wisconsin he has plenty of time to evaluate his life, and we see that both he and Jimmy spend the first couple of months just sorting things out before anything meaningful happens. For Jimmy, the changes come easier, and we can see that his future will be bright. Rico, on the other hand, has a much harder time coming to terms with the direction he wants his life to take, but ultimately makes the right decisions. Along the way are some good lessons and observations about life.

Dark Dude is told from Rico's perspective, and is done in an easy to read informal manner. His character starts out nicely developed, gets a little one dimensional in Wisconsin, but becomes strong again in the end. While Rico is a nicely formed character, my biggest beef with Dark Duke is that, besides Rico, Jimmy is the only other character who seems to be anything more than an afterthought. In fact, the only other characters for whom we get a decent amount of story development are his friend Gilberto, and his girlfriend Sheri, and even they feel a little one-dimensional. The other remaining characters, quite frankly, are stereotypical; we have the loving, drunken father, the strict, caring mother, the crazy, carefree hippies, the stern, crotchety boss, and the wholesome white folks. This is unfortunate because a story is only as good as its supporting cast, and while none of the other characters seem out of place, or get in the story's way, they don't add much to it either.

The only other issue I had with the book, and this is very personal, is that I felt there was a little too much cursing, smoking, drugs, and alcohol going on for the young adult audience to be reading about. I'm not naïve enough to think that it has to be a sunshine and rainbows kind of story where only the bad guys have vices, but it seemed to be a little over the top.

All in all... Dark Duke starts out strong, lets up a little in the middle, but redeems itself by the end. A worthwhile read for young adult trying to find their way in life.

How many teens have wished they could escape the darkness of their lives and live in a land of milk and honey? Rico Fuentes does just that in DARK DUDE by Oscar Hijuelos.

Rico is one-hundred-percent Cuban, yet he struggles daily to identify with his Cuban peers. His mom and little sister have brunette hair and cinnamon colored skin. His dad has both dark wavy hair and dark eyes. But Rico, with hazel eyes and fair skin with freckles, looks white. In Harlem, that pretty much guarantees daily harassment.

When Rico has to change to a public school, he is exposed to drugs, crime, and violence like never before. Early in the school year, a student is shot and Rico watches in shock as his new classmates celebrate a day off. Soon Rico's skipping school to avoid random beatings. When his pops finds out, he warns Rico that he'll be spending the summer with his military uncle in Florida.

It's not until his friend Jimmy is rushed to the hospital due to a drug-related accident that Rico realizes he has only one way out. He must find a way to Wisconsin to stay with his friend, Gilberto, on his farm. When Jimmy is released, Rico talks him into going to Wisconsin with him. After a road trip to remember on the way to the farm, they wonder what they've gotten themselves into when Gilberto immediately puts them to work painting the outside of the dilapidated farmhouse in exchange for their room and board.

Rico finds farm life in Wisconsin to be much slower than in Harlem. He spends a lot of time re-reading his favorite author, Mark Twain. Then he finds himself attracted to a girl whose father has a drinking problem. He'd never realized that his own experiences with an alcoholic dad could be helpful to someone else. As the months go by, Rico begins to look at himself, and those around him, differently. More importantly, he begins to accept himself.

DARK DUDE is a gritty read. The projects, the bars, and the backstreets of Harlem become real to the reader as Mr. Hijuelos drops you into each scene, and he creates a character with so much promise, but with so much working against him, that we cannot stop at each chapter break. Instead we read on, praying that nothing bad will happen to Rico, and when it does, we find ourselves urging Rico on, to find the best in himself, to reach for those dreams we know he wants. This is a realistic yet inspiring read for anyone who wants to find a way to make a different choice, to find the person they really want to be.

Reviewed by: Cana Rensberger

Dark Dude starts out well, with its colloquial language and gritty portrayal of the New York streets. The plot gets somewhat silly as the character moves to a more rural setting. The ending is a let-down because the character did not seem to experience any personal growth or change.

This is a charming book written from the Cuban-Latino perspective in the language of its leading character, Rico Fuentes. Although it is classified for youth, I think everyone will appreciate it. My main exposure to Latinos are the Mexican, central and south American cultures. I knew little of the Cuban Latino culture before I read this book. Rico is a very sympathetic character. Fifteen years old, intelligent, but growing up under desperate circumstances in ethnic Harlem. A "dark dude", meaning he's light-skinned, blond, with hazel eyes, he doesn't fit in with his Cuban family nor with his Puerto Rican and black neighbors. I found myself rooting for Rico and every other young person trying to overcome difficult circumstances, who has a dream but no apparent way out. Ricco is determined. He travels to the heart of "Wonderbread county" in Wisconsin, to stay with his friend Gilberto, who also escaped Harlem. Culture shock. This story is about a journey, a modern-day Huckleberry Finn novel. It is easy to see why Oscar Hijuelos is a Pulitizer Prize winner. He spares the reader nothing, however, his message is hope. I highly recommend this book for adults and teens.

Fifteen-year-old Rico Fuentes doesn't have it very easy growing up in the streets of 1960s New York City. He's cubano, but he doesn't look it. He looks like a whitey - blond-haired, blue-eyed, muddled with his Spanish, bad at the mambo. He's hassled at school and at home and sees his life going nowhere, so he decides to take off to live with his friend Gilberto in Wisconsin. There, he'll look like everyone else. There, he'll be able to just cut ties and be his own man. But what does it mean to belong? And can you really run from who you are?

Oscar Hijuelos gives us an ultimate cultural fish-out-of-water book. Rico is a good kid, smart with big dreams, but he doesn't feel like he belongs anywhere or to anyone. He tries to be bad sometimes, and usually fails at it. He plays at being cool and smooth and hip, though he's better at being sweet-hearted and thoughtful. He's funny and awkward and a little nerdy, with a unique perspective on the world. He's quite frankly one of the most enjoyable first person narrators I've gotten to read for awhile. Like if Holden Caulfield weren't so pessimistic, if he saw more beauty and less bitterness, he'd sound like Rico.

Surrounding Rico are a cast of flawed and charismatic characters - like Rico's Moms, who loves even as she yells; Rico's Pops, who drinks too much but wants better for his son than he has had in life; Gilberto, who Rico looks up to with legendary-type status; and Jimmy, who's killing his artistic talents with addictions. Hijuelos paints them all through his narrator's eyes, gives us all the information we need to flesh them out without betraying the first person perspective.

And Hijuelos' language. It's not flowery - that wouldn't be true to Rico's fantastic voice - but it's strategically poetic, developing the world all around with precise descriptions. Hijuelos' word choices give us everything - the urbanity of NYC, the farmlands of Wisconsin, the stark contrasts between them and, especially, the era. The book drips with the elements of the '60s without ever giving us an exact year of when it takes place.

It took me much too long to get around to reading and reviewing this book. Hijuelos has put together a strong novel that explores not just Rico's skin color but also identity, belonging, family and what it means to be home.

it's funny oscar says he would have loved this book at 14 because i loved mambo kings (his hit book) at 14. Dark Dude is such a let down, not just from him, but as a book, on it's own. I trudged through another of his books, 'the 14 sisters...' and after this third i have come to the conclusion that oscar fell off. He was never again able to capture the lightning of "kings" which, by the way, was based off of family and true stories although fictionalized and embellished as well as being such a hit that it easily blew Oscar's psychology and personalty apart. Who writes these other books is a different person who forgot who he was and how he got there.
Back to this book, Dark Dude. It was poorly written in almost every aspect. Cliche, 'unbelievable', and uninteresting are the characters, dialogue and plot. Okay the plot is believable. I agree with other reviewers that the cursing and drugs was out of place and especially when aimed at kids. This is worse than a kid reading adult book with bad stuff, he knows it's adult stuff. Otherwise we're just telling the kid drugs and bad language are kid's stuff. okay and really sometimes they are but i guess that's an art thing and a place where this book falls flat, short and off mark. This book is just amatuer and in bad taste.
Oscar if you're out there and your brain hasn't crystallized past new thoughts; go find something new so you can access your creative side instead of your 'replication of past achievements" side. Or just teach or start a foundation or something.
ps
read mambo kings play songs of love, you won't regret it.

This book is a interesting read. It is squarely aimed at the young adult market and deals with many coming of age topics. It is more a book about identity than teenage angst though and has much to recommend it to older readers and fans of Mr Hijuelos. Not as good as 'Mambo Kings' but better than 'Fourteen Sisters' would be my verdict.
Rico is Latino but doesn't fit in with his family because of his blond hair and pale skin and doesn't fit in with the white kids at school either because of his Cuban identity. Living in a drug and crime ridden neighbourhood (Harlem, New York) he can no longer stand and on the verge of being sent to military school for truancy he runs away with a drug addict friend to a farm in Wisconsin.
The book doesn't linger or explore the impact that being a runaway can have on the families left behind but has some gritty, reality check moments. It doesn't glorify being a runaway but doesn't criticise runaways either which may sit bady with some parents.
There are some graphic descriptions of heroin taking and violence. Once in Wisconsin, Rico works in a gas station in sort of a no mans land between his old life in New York and new life on the farm. At the gas station meets all manner of people who help or hinder him, black guys criticise him for being nervous and disrespectful and white guys beat him up for looking puny. The guns and reality of the real world still touch the country farm and Rico realises he can't run away from all his problems.
This book is all about the characters, their interactions and changes a new environment has on their identity rather than having an action filled plot but it is a wonderfully told story. Mr Hijuelos is hard to beat for creating likeable characters and memorable settings. His writing style is also simply beautiful.

Unable to deal with the pressure of living in Harlem, the frequent jumpings by just about everyone in his neighborhood because he's a light-skinned Latino, Rico Fuentes leaves for Wisconsin. Rico can blend in the Midwestern farm country with his light skin so well he's generally mistaken for a white. It's just what he needs, and the longer he stays on his friend's farm, the more he thinks he'll never go back to New York. But appearances aren't everything, and even if Rico is mostly enjoying his stay in Wisconsin, he still can't forget the family he left behind. And he eventually realizes that you can't change who you are no matter how far you travel from where you're from.

Dark Dude is a mildly interesting and very realistic novel about cultural identity. For some reason, I just couldn't get very into this book; the theme appeals to me but the story itself is nothing spectacular. I appreciate the detail included in Dark Dude, especially the stark differences between Harlem and small town Wisconsin; however, this because a bit too much with Hijuelos' very descriptive inclusions of drug use which I found sick to read about even though I recognize its realism. I like Hijuelos' depiction of race relations because it shows that no place in America, whether metropolis or small city, USA, is free of ethnic prejudices. Protagonist Rico, a generally pretty go-with-the-flow kind of guy, fits nicely into this equation with his Cuban roots and light complexion, a predicament which causes him trouble or discrimination wherever he goes. Despite finding him a little boring and dreamy, I ended up enjoying Rico's contemplations and conclusions about life. Dark Dude isn't a particularly great novel, but it does provide a unique take on the meaning of identity.

Thought I didn't particularly enjoy Dark Dude, fans of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, Amor and Summer Secrets by Diana Rodriguez Wallach, The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain may.

When New York City native Rico Fuentes winds up in Wisconsin (the Land of Cheese and Honey), the 15-year-old is a stranger in a strange land, indeed. DARK DUDE, an episodic novel that chronicles the misadventures our hero, is the latest instance of an established novelist entering YA terrain for the first time. Like Sherman Alexie, who brought a Native American perspective to THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, Oscar Hijuelos brings an outsider's perspective -- in this case, a Latino one in the form of a boy from Cuba who happens to have inherited his Irish grandfather's light-skinned, fair-haired genes.

A sprawling book at 439 pp., DARK DUDE dwells in the Big Apple for its first 125 pages as Hijuelos details Rico's unhappiness in a neighborhood of school shootings, drug deals, and racial strife. When Gilberto, an older brother figure to Rico, wins the lottery and leaves for a college in Wisconsin, doors with a Midwestern perspective open for our young protagonist. The catalyst that finally sends Rico and his drug-addled pal, Jimmy, westward-ho comes when Rico's parents decide to send him to his strict uncle's military academy down in Florida as punishment for repeatedly skipping school.

Once in Wisconsin, the novel settles to a leisurely pace. There is no real sense of rising action and climax; instead, a lazy and interesting narrative based on identity and coming of age plays out as Rico and Jimmy join Gilberto in a sprawling farmhouse of hippie-like lodgers. Rico, who looks as white as a peeled apple, has enough of a wholesome American look to fit in, but he doesn't attend school for fear of being busted and sent home. Instead he takes a graveyard shift job at a gas station in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin. Like the miscreants and petty thieves that populate the Mississippi River in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (Rico's favorite book), this station brings all sorts of drifters -- some quite dangerous -- to our hero, who quickly learns that bad people don't just live in America's big cities.

Hijuelos ultimately wins readers over with the characterization of Rico, a winsome kid trying to do right in a world of temptation, greed, and crime. He makes his bid for a pretty girl, holds on to his dream of authoring a comic book for DC Comics, and gets used to life on a farm, all while wondering about the parents he left back in New York City. Baby boomers will enjoy the 70s feel of this book, and high school readers will take to Rico's ever-present trials by fire. It may not be destined to be a classic, but ultimately DARK DUDE is worth the ride for fans of Latino and YA literature alike.