Customer Reviews

Spidertown: A Novel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ever wonder, as I have, what it is like to come of age in the South Bronx? To be a citizen of the world's greatest nation, a short ride from Trump Tower, commuting distance from a million high paying jobs yet to fear for your life night and day, to have your planning horizon be limited to a few days and a few blocks, to see crime as a route to respectability?

To enter another person's world, to see things as they see them, to allow for different reactions to similar circumstances is to connect with people in a powerful way. Such empathy, compassion, and insight are essential for succeeding with the Genuine Selling system and to living a fulfilling life of Genuine Success. Listening to the stories of people in circumstances different from your own is entertaining exercise that develops this important skill. This novel (like _When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth_ by Fernanda Eberstadt and _Ellen Foster_ by Kaye Gibbons) offers unusually intimate and ! immersive experiences of worlds most business people never encounter, yet the practice it offers with escaping our own narrow versions of reality can help us to be more receptive to the various worlds of the people we manage and sell to every day.

Mr. Rodriguez grew up in one of America's most dangerous neighborhoods and wrote this book while he was still there. Spidertown is blunt and vivid and begins to answer the question often in my mind when I hear of people in such circumstances, "Why don't you just go somewhere else?" Getting out is not so easy when you are so far in that it gets into you.

16 year-old Miguel want's out of the live-fast-die-young drug trade that permeates the South Bronx. The glimmer of hope that arrives,allowing him to even consider leaving his cracklord mentor and friend Spider, is a young beauty named Cristalena. The novel is fast-paced and Abraham Rodriguez,Jr. lets you feel Miguel's frustration and pain, as he has some very adult decisions to make. Often you forget that he is only a teen who's only worries should be getting up early for school the next morning...not whether he'll survive a drive-by shooting, or get "iced" by his fellow compatriots in the drug trade. As a white reader of this novel, I didn't think I'd be able to relate to the Latino characters in the story. But as a college sophomore, I relate to Amelia, the college student-turned-crackhead-turned college student, who knows the only way out of the streets of the South Bronx is by getting off of them and getting an education. You feel the frustration, desperation, and hopelessness that all these characters feel. Even the dealers and pimps themselves admit that they know this is the only hand they have been alloted to play in life, and therefore, since this is all they know, dealing drugs is all they will do. The violence will go on, no matter how senseless we all feel it is. Rodriguez attacks white people as being the cause of the South Bronx's state of chaos. He is right, although I would go farther by blaming the U.S. government, which essentially are supposed to be the "people" anyway. Unfortunately, the wealthy are the only ones who ever really benefit from any type of government. But even in the South Bronx, and other cities like it across America, young people as well as old, hold onto hope as the last miracle for survival against what must seem to them, a pre-ordained situation of hopelessness. Miguel and the other young people who must eke out a living in a place where parents don't want them, school is pointless, and a job at McDonald's are for chumps, are the voice of a generation that aren't crying or whining, but work with what they have, simply in order to live another day.

During Spidertown's first printing I read it and was so moved I passed the book along, it found its way from Co-Op City to Fordham, from Harlem to Queens ... and it may have been the first and last time that those friends of mine, some of them no longer with us, saw their lives potrayed in print with the honesty and pride that they deserve ... Abraham Rodriguez Jr. gave them something precious ... the knowledge that our stories are worth telling ... worth reading .... I never did get that original copy back, it's nice to know the book has been reprinted ... it's nice to know Rodriguez' genius has been recognized ... it's nice to have our stories told with such dignity ... finally ...

I enjoyed this book. I can really relate to this book because for every character in the story i had a face to match it. I was even one of those characters. This book really touch me in the sincerety in the feelings of these characters. This book can not be anymore realistic than it is. Mr. Rodriquez out did himself in depicting the lives in these urban areas and I thank him for it. I finally read something that was exactly how i see things now and back when i was 16 1/2 years old.

You get the impression the author really poured his heart into this one. The book is written with a lot of heart and soul, and captures the truth of life at the street level as well as Miguel Pinero or Richard Price. My only complaint is that it is terribly overwritten in places. Back off, Little Brother, let your characters breath and let the story do the work. You don't need to sweat so much showing off your prose.

I discovered Abraham Rodriguez when I read a great short story of his in the equally great anthology, "Boricuas: Influential Puerto Rican Writings." After I read that short story, I knew I had to read more of this amazing stylist. "Spidertown" was an amazing novel. It would make an amazing movie. Read it!

An amazing book. Gets a lil confusing at times but all is made clear. The story has many twists and turns and ends in a suprise that is amazingly simple. Very intense.

SPIDERTOWN may be one of the best books I have read in a long time. The hardships of a sixteen year old and his decision to get out of the gangster life he has been living in is one of the many reasons this book will keep you in suspense and you will not want to put the book down. It also deals with children yearning for a better life and thinking they have no other choice then to seek richness in selling crack and endagering their lives. I highly recommend this book to those who like a well written novel and understand the reality of those children who aren't as fortunate as others in life.

THIS IS ONE OF THE PHATEST BOOKS I EVER READ. MIGUEL LIVED THE FAST LIFE. THIS BOOK HAS SEX,DRUGS,AND VIOLENCE. I WAS ENTHRALLED BY THE STREET IMAGERY PAINTED BY ABRAHAM RODRIGUEZ JR. THIS BOOK SHOULD BE A MOVIE.