Random Family: The Bronx Is Drowning
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s amazing longitudinal history of a sprawling New York family, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, is hard to read, but even harder to put down. The sheer size and shape of the project is tough to get my head around; she must have functionally lived with these people for the better part of 15 years, and to gain their trust and keep it, then write a compelling non-fiction narrative that functions as a documentary in book form…first it seems impressive. Then it seems crazy. Then it seems impressive again. Then it seems crazy some more. It’s like Hoop Dreams, but in book form and three times as long in the making.
It’s also like Hoop Dreams in that LeBlanc is gentle and reserved with its treatment of its subjects. She doesn’t judge, or need to; the facts and events accumulate and gather weight on their own. Her descriptions go a hair overboard in places, straining at the literary, but it’s not bothersome (and I can only imagine the effort it must have taken to resist going full frontal caps-lock about various comments and situations). Most of the time, the prose is direct and evocative, refusing to hold the reader’s hand or supply closure that isn’t there.
I physically cringed at every bad decision Coco and Jessica make, every bit of bad luck that kiboshes an attempt to change, every relationship that sours, every windfall that gets spent on gimcracks or fast food. I didn’t judge them; just the opposite — I made so many of the same illogically hopeful assumptions and took so many of the same dumb risks at that age, but I had a safety net. I had dozens of them. These people live a sawbuck’s length from disaster at all times.
But then, they live. They plan, they dream, they put together a family the best they can. The thing LeBlanc does best is avoid overselling either the hope or the catastrophe; she paints a portrait of intersecting lives, and by the end, it’s filled in so well that I felt like I knew them, their living rooms and their snacks.
It’s not uplifting, exactly, but it’s fascinating and compassionately done. Highly recommend!
Tags: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc books Steve James
Thanks for the review – I’ve been meaning to read this for a while.
Yay, you read “Random Family”! I first had to read it as part of a classroom assignment on cultural issues, and have reread it many times since. As LeBlanc explains in her epilogue, what makes the book compelling and worth keep reading is really following Coco through her various attempts at a rebirth of sorts. You can identify with how ordinary she is, and very easily put yourself in her shoes. It’s no surprise then, that once you do, your heart breaks for her, because you understand how well she means, and how hard she tries, making you all the more crestfallen when her attempts at positive changes fail.
Being that I had planned working as a teacher in inner city schools (then life got in the way), it really helped me understand how some parents who on the surface might sound and seem fairly neglectful are in fact trying to carry on the best they can given their own personal and financial limitations. I’d say that from the standpoint of my profession, where a lot of healthy and well-to-do young white women do come in with very strong cultural presuppositions that are just plain simplistic if not outright misguided, it should be required reading.
A work friend of mine told me to read this a few years ago. I also could NOT put it down, and still have my copy on the shelf. Excellent, excellent ’embedded anthropology’ without judgment. The heartache is incredible.
One of the best works of journalism I’ve ever read. And probably will survive as an equally great Human Behavior resource.
I know a couple of people like Coco, and I’d never been able to understand why they made all the choices they made, why they couldn’t see the long game. Reading Random Family clued me in in a way that I’ve since found really valuable. It’s certainly permitted me to be less knee-jerk judgy, to be able to see that ‘the long game’ just doesn’t exist in these environments.
I sometimes wonder what’s happened to them.
I want to read this. I also want to thank you for expanding my vocabulary: I had to look up “sawbuck” and “gimcrack”.
Thanks for this. I loved this book so much and reread it recently for a book club discussion. The thing that sticks with me is how clear it is what my safety nets do for me. If I’d been born in the same place as Jessica or Coco, I don’t see myself having the force of will or ability to change my situation. You’d have to be so focused, so self-centered, and so iron willed to clear those hurdles. And you really couldn’t make any mistakes.
I read this back when it first came out. A friend handed it to me and told me just that the author had once worked for our boss. So it wasn’t until I was nearly through the book that I talked to her more about it and finally tumbled to the fact that it wasn’t fiction. I’m not sure I’d have been able to keep reading all those heart wrenching decisions if I’d known right off the bat. It was riveting but not in a car wreck sort of way. Somehow both author and characters keep hope alive in a way I would not have thought possible.
SUCH a great book. I cannot imagine how long it took her to write it, and I would love to know the mechanics of how she did it. Did she take notes all the time? Didn’t the note-taking distract people from what they were doing? Did she do it so much that people stopped noticing? How did she convince people who were often on the wrong side of the law to trust her to record their world? How do you get that kind of access?
I came across some “writing about writing” kind of piece recently that suggested doing interviews in a semi-unusual way. Like, play a game of pool together or go shopping or something. And I just couldn’t imagine how you a) suggest that to a busy person and b) how you actually take notes while you do that?
Such a fantastic book.One of the best I have ever read, just couldn’t put it down! Draws you into their lives. And because it’s all true it makes it all the more poignant! So different to anything I’ve read before. Love it!! Highly Recommend it to anyone!
I am still in the middle, but I keep postponing finishing it because I feel like a part of my life will be over when I’m done! I love this review, it is so spot on, and I love many of the other comments above. Its an amazing feat, what she has done; she really allows us as the readers to feel like we get to know these people, which for someone like myself– white, upper middle class– is very special because its likely that I’ll never *really* get to know people like the ones in this book on a *really* personal level. And when we don’t know people on a personal level, we depersonalize them and judge and blame them for their decisions and their lives, because its emotionally too difficult for our minds to do otherwise. But when you know someone personally, that’s not possible; and that is the magic that LeBlanc has accomplished. I feel like I know these people so well, I couldn’t possibly turn my back on them. Personal connection *is* what’s necessary to have real compassion and understanding and empathy, and to remain nonjudgmental and open-hearted. THANK YOU for such an opportunity!!