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Street Dreams

by Tama Wise (Goodreads Author)

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 13 ratings · 9 reviews

Tyson Rua has more than his fair share of problems growing up in South Auckland. Working a night job to support his mother and helping bring up his two younger brothers is just the half of it. His best friend Rawiri is falling afoul of a broken home, and now Tyson's fallen in love at first sight.

Only thing is, it's another guy.

Living life on the sidelines of the local hip-...more

Paperback, 264 pages

Published March 13th 2012 by Bold Strokes Books

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Queer PoC Books Published in 2012

28th out of 29 books — 3 voters

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Nov 16, 2011 Jo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: good-grief, heart-skipped-a-beat, for-review, ya, you-got-a-friend-in-me, e

“There had to be something to take the taste off life.”

Initial Final Page Thoughts.
Sounds good to me too, Tyson.

High Points.
Boys, boys, boys! Seriously, there are two females in this book and it’s brilliant. I always forget how annoying YA girls are. But yeah… Tyson, Marc, Rawiri, Ihaia…. All of them . As a city girl myself, the urban setting was greatly appreciated. Auckland slang (Although I had to admit that I still don’t understand how the word ‘bro’ can be pronounced as ‘bru’… thanks to t...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

We all dream. Grand or small the dreams keep us up and moving through the day. But they can get lost or forgotten so easily in the harsh monotony of the day to day struggle to live and work. How do we keep dreaming when everything seems to shout out—“Why bother?”

Tama Wise’s Street Dreams tells the story of Tyson Rua growing up in a hard neighborhood in Auckland, New Zealand. A neighborhood filled with pain, poverty, violence in the homes and out, hip hop, breaking, work, graffiti, loyalty, and l...more We all dream. Grand or small the dreams keep us up and moving through the day. But they can get lost or forgotten so easily in the harsh monotony of the day to day struggle to live and work. How do we keep dreaming when everything seems to shout out—“Why bother?”

Tama Wise’s Street Dreams tells the story of Tyson Rua growing up in a hard neighborhood in Auckland, New Zealand. A neighborhood filled with pain, poverty, violence in the homes and out, hip hop, breaking, work, graffiti, loyalty, and love. The beautiful language, beat of the music, and color of the words pulled me right into Tyson’s life and struggle. Lost within the routine of working nights and sleeping days, Tyson begins to look at his own desires and dares to look up from his day, reach out, and dream! He dreams of finding true love in the arms of a man.

Breathtakingly gorgeous descriptions rip through this story from page one. I have not fallen this hard for an author’s style and language since a particular pack of wolves took up residency in my heart. It is beautiful. A seemingly simple description of the sky will make you pause and look to the heavens—“The clouds were a dark cauldron of movement.” I could feel the moist heat of the kitchen, the coolness of the alleys, sway of the train, pull of the bed after a long night, the suffocating beat of the clubs, warmth of an understanding voice, strength of an embrace, the thump of the music pulsing through Tyson’s headphones, and that all consuming swirl and jolt of emotion when you spot the boy of your dreams across the way! Man ‘o man did Mr. Wise get the flutter and bubble in your heart and gut right on the page for all to experience when the guy you have the hots for goes walking on by! :D

Oh, what love can do to our hearts and souls! Tyson’s journey and battle to accept and feel at home with his sexuality was awe inspiring! His courage and strength just bowled me over! The steps, questions, doubts, fears and confusion swirling through Tyson were captured with such power it made my heart ache with pain and my stomach knot with fear. This was a hard read at times with Tyson’s depression so thick that it rippled out to touch my own day and heart. From page one though, you will root for these characters and fall in love with this book. Tyson, Rawiri, Marc, Ihaia and so many more will inspire you to keep pushing, working, searching, and dreaming!

As the song says, dream on until your dreams come true!

Tama Wise is a powerful and inspirational new force in YA fiction. I look forward to experiencing his words again.
(less)

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Mar 16, 2013 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Well I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, and the story and characters have popped into my brain on odd occasions over the last few days since I' finished it. It's not perfect, and there's a few niggling flaws, but it's thought provoking and a good character study.

Tyson is a teenage Maori boy with problems. His father is dead and he's working night shift washing dishes in an upmarket restaurant in Auckland City. It takes him an hour each way on the train to get to work from his impoveris...more Well I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, and the story and characters have popped into my brain on odd occasions over the last few days since I' finished it. It's not perfect, and there's a few niggling flaws, but it's thought provoking and a good character study.

Tyson is a teenage Maori boy with problems. His father is dead and he's working night shift washing dishes in an upmarket restaurant in Auckland City. It takes him an hour each way on the train to get to work from his impoverished South Auckland suburb. He passes the time listening to local hip hop, which is his passion. He hardly sees his mum, who works and also seems to look after his grandparents. If Tyson's life looks bad, his best mate Rawiri's is worse - straight out of Once Were Warriors - drunken abusive family, and a busted leg that stops him playing rugby.

But Tyson's biggest issue is his sexuality. We hit this problem on page 1, when Tyson falls in love at first sight with Marc, a hip hop white boy on the train. Tyson is barely admitting to himself that he's gay, and he hasn't told anyone else. When he plucks up the courage to talk to Marc, a friendship develops. Marc is impressed with Tyson's drawings, and introduces him to Dodgee, a a hip hop crew who encourage Tyson into graffiti art.

At first I found the book a bit slow, and a bit repetitive. Yeah, we get that Rawiri's a stocky Maori, yeah, we get that South Auckland looks pretty bleak. There's a few illogical things - hospital staff would have been suspicious about how Rawiri's leg was injured surely, and alerted CYFs (government dept Child Youth and Family); Tyson and Rawiri smoking a joint out the window and his mum comes in and SUSPECTS NOTHING - yeah, right! But I got hooked into the story and wanted to find out what happened next - it wasn't a predictable story. It was very honest, and I'd guess pretty autobiographical. It's not easy for any teenager to come out, but so much harder when you've never seen anyone like you who is gay, and Tyson's struggles seem pretty authentic. So as a reader, I gave it 4 stars.

But as a children's and teens librarian, I'm just not sure who is going to read this. I remember reading Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette when I was a teen and it was like a lightbulb moment. It was a book about us! Even tho it was an Australian book and not an NZ one, it captured teen life in a surfing town, it had the slang we used and the situations we got into. It was so cool reading about teens like us. And I'd like teens like Tyson to read a book about a kid from their part of town, listening to their music and speaking like they do. But some of these teens won't have the reading skills to read this, or just don't consider reading a book at all, let alone of this length. And sadly we don't see that many hip hop teens In the library, although we are becoming a lot more proactive about reaching the Maori community.

The fact that Tyson is gay will also put off potential readers. This is a country where the weatherman on the most popular evening news show is an openly gay Maori guy, and where we've had a transgender Maori Member of Parliament. And yet there's still a vein of homophobia, and sadly characters like Seige, the violent homophobe in the story, aren't uncommon. Once men took pride in being men, being the breadwinner and supporting their families. Now there's no jobs for these men to do, and they don't live with the mothers of their children to support them. Instead the welfare state - taxpayers - do. So their masculinity comes through this ultra masculine behaviour - being staunch, being threatening, being homophobic. I think it will be a challenge for a lot of young Maori men to read this novel. And that's sad, because it does what a piece of fiction should do, which is give the reader a glimpse into the human condition, showing our differences and our similarities. The author, Tama Wise, is speaking at a children's librarians conference, so it will be interesting to hear how the book is doing. It certainly adds to one of our kete (basket) of knowledge, and that's got to be a good thing :)(less)

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Jan 20, 2012 Anastasia rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: arcs

This review was originally posted at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog on January 20, 2012.

The problem (if it can be called a "problem") with reading so many great books in a short amount of time is that the books that aren't great but are still good seem even less good than they normally would if they'd were read after a streak of sucky books. Do you know what I mean? Street Dreams isn't a bad book. I just wasn't as wowed with it as I wanted to be.

I liked Tyson! He's got a lot of problems and he doesn't...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Mia Searles rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: gay-lesbian, romance, young-adult, indie

I was really excited when I got the chance to read Street Dreams for a couple of reasons. One, because I enjoy reading LGBT literature, especially in the young adult category so that I can stay up to date on the issues some of these teens go through (all over the world as this book proves). Secondly, what better way to learn about another country and culture then to read a book set in a different place then my own?

Street Dreams takes place in a downtrodden area of Auckland, New Zealand. Tama Wis...more

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May 17, 2012 Christopher Ruz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Street Dreams might be aimed at a YA audience, but it doesn't shy away from adult topics. Tyson, our hero, is up to his eyeballs in problems. His mother is working herself ragged to support their family, his best friend Rawiri is in the middle of an abusive home situation, and Tyson's own job as a dishwasher is growing more and more precarious. Most important of all is Tyson's own struggle to reconcile himself with his sexuality. As a young man of mixed islander descent, Tyson is expected to be...more Street Dreams might be aimed at a YA audience, but it doesn't shy away from adult topics. Tyson, our hero, is up to his eyeballs in problems. His mother is working herself ragged to support their family, his best friend Rawiri is in the middle of an abusive home situation, and Tyson's own job as a dishwasher is growing more and more precarious. Most important of all is Tyson's own struggle to reconcile himself with his sexuality. As a young man of mixed islander descent, Tyson is expected to be the epitome of testosterone, knocking heads and taking names. Instead, he's fallen in love with a white hip-hop promoter who, for all Tyson knows, might not even be gay himself.

He can't tell his friends. He can't tell his family. Tyson has been thrown into a dangerous, confusing world without permission, and Street Dreams is the story of his struggle back to the surface. Will he come out in one piece? Or will his sexuality clash with the hyper-masculine culture of NZ hip hop, and leave him shattered?

As a white guy raised in an upper-middle-class family, I thought it would be difficult to relate to a gay brown guy stuck in a ramshackle lower-class society. It wasn't. Tama Wise paints Tyson's life with expert strokes, and while the YA style means a lot of the subtleties of Tyson's emotional struggle are laid out in black and white, there are also some beautiful instances where the harsh realities are left for us to infer. There are many other moments throughout Street Dreams that left my heart pounding. It's funny that, prior to picking up Street Dreams, I was reading a thriller packed full with explosions, murders and gunfights in the Egyptian desert that never really raised a sweat. On the other hand, Tyson's panic at having a gay magazine discovered beneath his bed (or Rawiri leafing through his sketch books and finding Tyson's doodles of naked men) left me hyperventilating. His terror was my terror.

Street Dreams also has a real autobiographical feel about it. For example, when Tyson (against his will) gets dragged to a gay club populated almost entirely by skinny white boys. Feeling like an outsider even when surrounded by other gay men, Tyson naturally gravitates towards the only other Islander in the club. After finally mustering up the courage to say hello and offer to buy the guy a drink, Tyson is told, plainly, brutally, “I don't do brown.”

You can't make that stuff up. Other moments, like when Tyson is invited out by a graffiti/breakdance crew to an abandoned industrial site to smoke pot and paint, are so vivid that I can't believe they weren't based on some measure of reality. And the pure existential agony of Tyson coming to terms with his sexuality is too cutting, too human. This novel is as true and honest as it gets.

It's not a perfect story, though. Tyson's life is filled with too many coincidences – people always show up at the worst possible times, like the whole cast of the novel is just walking back and forth between Tyson's home and the restaurant where he works. The finale is also relentless in how many terrible things pile on Tyson's shoulders at one time. Family tragedy, friendships in trouble, financial woes, relationship issues, homophobic bullying... It can feel really bleak. Then again, this is exactly why Street Dreams kept me up until 2am – I desperately needed resolution. Tyson had me in his grasp.

In conclusion, Street Dreams is excellent. Sure, it's aimed at a YA audience and written in a YA style, but the subject matter is dark and deeply affecting. I can't remember the last time I picked up a slice-of-life YA novel that gripped me like this. Tama Wise has serious talent. Keep an eye on him.(less)

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Mar 13, 2012 Cassi aka Snow White Haggard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: galleys, read-in-2012

3.5 stars

Rating Street Dreams is giving me fits. It's not a bad book. It's an fairly ambitious book with flaws, but a book that's heart is in the right place.

I'm honestly not sure how I ended up requesting this book from Netgalley. The story is centered around a boy who is struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality. It's not that I have an issue with that, but I don't typically read issue books or any kind of romance. So it's like a double whammy of not my normal.

But this book made me th...more

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Mar 16, 2013 Mary Davis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-2013

More thorough review later. A bit dark and depressing, yet there is still something about Tyson that makes you want to go on this journey with him, and the author redeems it at the end. Highly recommend this book.

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Dec 23, 2011 L.E.Olteano rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arc, blog-review, netgalley, reviewed, received-for-review

Amazing story, I loved it!! Review to come in March 2012 :D

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About Tama Wise

Tama Wise is a Māori author of Ngāpuhi descent. He was influenced by growing up with hip hop culture, as one of a generation of urban Polynesians searching for identity. Coming to writing in his teens, he was quickly drawn to what little fiction he could find that addressed race, sexuality, and poverty in an urban setting. Since then he has told stories of this world and others, weaving love, life...more

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