Product Description
Random Family tells the American outlaw saga lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. With an immediacy made possible only after ten years of reporting, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses the reader in the mind-boggling intricacies of the little-known ghetto world. She charts the tumultuous cycle of the generations, as girls become mothers, mothers become grandmothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation.

Two romances thread through Random Family: the sexually charismatic nineteen-year-old Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and fourteen-year-old Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar, an aspiring thug. Fleeing from family problems, the young couples try to outrun their destinies. Chauffeurs whisk them to getaways in the Poconos and to nightclubs. They cruise the streets in Lamborghinis and customized James Bond cars. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between life and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George's business activities; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty. Together, then apart, the teenagers make family where they find it. Girls look for excitement and find trouble; boys, searching for adventure, join crews and prison gangs. Coco moves upstate to dodge the hazards of the Bronx; Jessica seeks solace in romance. Both find that love is the only place to go.

A gifted prose stylist and a profoundly compassionate observer, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc has slipped behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding inner-city life and come back with a riveting, haunting, and true urban soap opera that reveals the clenched grip of the streets. Random Family is a compulsive read and an important journalistic achievement, sure to take its place beside the classics of the genre.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 142 reviews)

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
August 22, 2008

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.
August 01, 2008

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!
July 23, 2008

COCO

One of the girls in this book was a girl I know, it was written really well. I loved the book.
July 07, 2008

Anthropological quest

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.
June 02, 2008

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