Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx Paperback – February 10, 2004

This book can give you PTSD. Knowing these are true accounts of real people made moments hard to read, but it is a must read. Although I come from a separate, nearly opposite life, I found myself able to relate to the psychological trauma of Cesar (whom I grew to hate in his typical prison-based self a righteousness and hypocritical lectures of parenting to Coco) and the emotional need for love like Jessica. I found myself highlighting any snippet of what could be true love between the Jessica and George and Frankie and Coco. Like them back then, I guess, I was eager to find some proof of love between the couples after all the heartaches and pain they endured.

Eye opening story by an embedded reporter. This important nonfiction tale needed to be told. Poverty and drugs in the inner-city destroys lives and like any other catastrophe you find heroes and demons. This book changed my opinion (judgement) of young moms with too many babies with too many daddies.

This was a difficult book to read . . it's a true, and I assume, ongoing story that I could see no solution to. It seemed to come alive, so much so that I felt stressed by the constant yelling and lying and dysfunction . . showing the skills of the writer. I do wonder, though, about the ethics and decency of the writer, who could witness these traumatic life events and not step in to try to help. Were any proceeds from the sales of the book brought back to the neighborhood or the real inhabitants who this story was about? Seems like something should have been set up ,. . . tuition programs, daycare programs, adult education, etc. Book also highlights are so many people in positions of authority are not really listening to the cries for help

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's "Random Family" grips you from the start and doesn't let go. This is one compelling read. The book follows the stories of drug kingpin Boy George, street tough Cesar, Cesar's sister Jessica (who is a lover of Boy George), Coco (who is in love with Cesar) and their expanding circle of lovers, kids and family. The locus of the action is on the streets and in the tenements of the South Bronx, within the social welfare bureaucracy, and in penitentiaries. The subtext and meta-story has to do with the damaging effects of poverty going down the generations, and how hard it is to break free from the chains of poverty. The action takes place in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

As I've noted, "Random Family" is a compelling read. There are, however, a couple of things that make me uneasy about this "instant classic" (the book was first published in 2003).

"Random Family" is presented as non-fiction, but of course there is no way to be sure how accurately reality is depicted. This is always a difficult issue, but particularly troublesome here. Author Leblanc states in her end note that "Random Family" is a "book of nonfiction. I was present for much of what is depicted...." She also says that she relied on hundreds of hours of written and taped reviews, and that descriptions of experiences and exchanges were confirmed through primary and secondary interviews.

This all sounds authoritative, and I'm not necessarily accusing Leblanc of intentional mendacity, but of course the reader has no practical way to audit her source material. Even granting her 100% accuracy of recall and transcription there are still a couple of points worth noting.

She says that (a) this is a work of non-fiction; (b) she (the author) was present at many of the scenes described; and (c) the author does not in fact appear in any of these scenes. Alas, this is a contradiction on its face.

There is an elegiac quality to some of the reminiscing she transcribes in terms of things like the attractiveness of men and women, the wealth of drug dealers, and so on. How much of this is gilding the memories, a natural thing for people to do when they talk about their pasts?

I am also disturbed by the narrative tone of the book. It partially sounds like anthropology, but in fact at best is nonfiction reportage. The anthropological tone---almost like Margaret Meade or Oscar Lewis's Mexico studies---tends to manipulate the reader to put aside normal skepticism, and also to regard the characters in the book as quaint "subjects"---rather than the sign of the failure of our society and culture that they are. This is voyeurism, plain and simple.

"Random Family" features third-person omniscient narrative---the narrator is apparently all-seeing and all-knowing. Every time this narrative (outside of dialog and memories) slipped in the demotic argot of the characters in the book---for example, "broke night" is a standard phrase used in the book to describe staying up all night---I was jarred.

In the end, this is a compelling book and a great read that left me sad for the waste of lives and human talent that it describes, and also with some doubts about the tone and substance of the narration.

Review © Harold Davis

I read this book as a class assignment for my interest within family dynamics and psychology. While I found my interest was kept while reading I was mostly shocked by the indept of the characters. Had I not read this I would not have understood child development outside of my own experience. To watch serena coco and Mercedes grow up within the chapters brought them to life to me.

much has been made of the method used in writing this book, and from the first page through to the last, it is clear that an extraordinary amount of work went into the writing of this story. however, i am always a bit skeptical of the fiction/non-fiction divide. regardless if the events are taken from real life, the author is still going to frame those events in a narrative and leave some things out and put some things in that fit into a narrative structure. this, to me, explains the slightly redemptive aspect of some of the storylines towards the end, and the overwhelming negativity of many of the interactions throughout the rest of the book.

this is an amazing portrait of an interconnected group of people, some of whom are family. through their day-to-day lives and through the detailed minutia of their struggles in moving through homes, neighborhoods, schools, and other government institutions, the reader comes away with an understanding of some of the failures of our society, some of the people who are trying to make it better, and some of the impoverished who are in many ways just victims of their circumstances and family's overbearingness, and in other ways the creators of their lot through bad decision making and cultural practices antithetical to the pursuit of happiness as it may be known to the middle classes.

the characters are intriguing and their stories are exciting at times, and when they arent, you have to remember that life isnt always exciting. reading this book and looking for excitement in the characters lives made me feel a bit like a bad person, but then again, this is a book and not a sociological report: it's there to entertain, right?

an amazing book. read it.