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Apr 03, 2008

Richard rated it:

If this book was a novel, readers would probably dismiss it as too chaotic and not believable. But it is in fact a true story, the never ending cycle of living on the edge, the ghetto (largely the Bronx), where the girls get pregnant and the guys sell drugs and go to jail (some of the girls do too). Somehow, LeBlanc, the author, has gotten inside several families, and the result is you live with them, with all their turmoil, rage, love and loyalties. I'm not sure I've ever read a more honest acc More...

5 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 25, 2007

Kristine rated it:

WARNING TO MY BOOK CLUB: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW!!!! IT’S ONE OF THE BOOKS WE PICKED TO READ SOON.

IT’S ALSO POSSIBLE THAT MY VIEWS WILL CHANGE AFTER A SECOND READ.

SO DON’T READ THIS REVIEW YET.

DON’T READ THIS REVIEW

DON’T READ THIS REVIEW

This book was pretty good... about a family in the Bronx that she followed for ten years.
It relates to poverty/race a bit- it's interesting to see how they survive- unfortunately j More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Kelly rated it:

It's hard to truly understand poverty unless a) you experience it first-hand, or b) you read a work like Random Family. But this isn't just some study about poverty; it's about people.

Although LeBlanc zooms in on several family members, she focuses on the lives of Coco and Jessica, two Latina women who at the beginning of the book are mid-teens--a vulnerable stage where they're trying to build their identities, impress others, and be experimental. This is where they start to make de More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2008

Edan rated it:

Since I began this book a week ago, I've had about 4 or 5 dreams about its characters--real people whose lives are brutal, unfair, fascinating, and frustrating. At first I was struck by the "then this happened, then this happened," summarized nature of the narrative, LeBlanc's absence somewhat troubling, ghost-like, but as the story continued the telling of it slowed, became more dramatic, and occasionally LeBlanc added interpretations of these people's predicaments. She is both objec More...

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 25, 2008

Amber rated it:

This is a phenomenal book that unflinchingly documents the personal stories of a loosely defined bronx family. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immersed herself in an impoverished, marginalized community for over 10 years and this book is the result. As a social worker these are stories I hear often: generations of abuse, addictions, teen pregnancies, incarceration, abandonment, mind numbing poverty, and violence. What is truly amazing about LeBlanc's work is that she does not glamorize, sanitize, condemn, More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 22, 2008

Maureen rated it:

I cherish this book. My daughter read it for a journalism class at NYU, and insisted that I read it. The author, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, spent ten years observing four young people and their extended families. She has written a masterwork in about living life on the streets in the Bronx. It is quite possibly the most thought-provoking book I have ever read. Even though we read it two years ago, Erin and I are still talking about it. Here is a small sample, from page 69:

" More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 05, 2010

Seán rated it:

I think the LA Times blurb for Random Family, which called the book a 'non-fiction Middlemarch of the underclass,' is absolutely spot-on. While it is principally a brilliant work of journalism, the book also feels at times like a massive 19th century English novel. You know, one whose four dozen-odd 'characters' occupy a wide range of positions within their class, and it feels as if the story could go on, and should go on, forever. Most of the characters flit in and out of the narrative; however More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2010

Lynn rated it:

This book is a detailed account of the urban life as experienced by minorities in a poor socio-economic class. Within this description of ceaseless struggle is the real life characters' search for love. The author combines her skills as a journalist with the style of a novelist to create a compelling and smooth story. The author spent over a decade researching the plight of the people in poverty; the result is a plot with characters that can be applied to any urban setting.

The main c More...

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Mar 26, 2009

jamie rated it:

An eye-opening true life account of life in the inner city. if i were to rename it, i'd title it "Survivor: Bronx". I was a camp counselor in North Philadelphia and was very surprised to see how similar living conditions in the bronx are to philly. All the families are on welfare, most of the kids have different fathers, it is commonplace for teenage single mothers, everyone had a family member or knew someone in jail, and the kids also lived in a drug infested neighborhood. I found re More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 08, 2009

UpstateNYgal rated it:

I had to go to Amazon and copy word for word their synopsis because I strongly urge everyone to read this book and I did not want to do it a disservice by my meager way with words so this excerpt is from Amazon.com

Politicians rail about welfare queens, crack babies and deadbeat dads, but what do they know about the real struggle it takes to survive being poor?

Journalist LeBlanc spent some 10 years researching and interviewing one extended family-mother Lourdes, daughter More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2009

Evanston Public added it

Journalist LeBlanc spent over a decade throughout the 80s and 90s with the members of one extended family in the Bronx, following their every move at home, on the streets, in hospital rooms, court hearings, and prison cells. As the children grow up amid bitter poverty, a fractured home life, and the dangerously alluring 1980s explosion of the street drug trade, they must struggle not only towards adulthood, but also for their own everyday survival. LeBlanc becomes like a member of the family, pl More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 22, 2008

Panagiota rated it:

My notes: Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is a nonfiction book about how families in the Bronx acted and grew up in the late eighties to the twenty-first century. There are two main story lines with Jessica and Boy George and Jessica’s younger brother Cesar and his girlfriend Coco. Jessica and her family are living in Bronx, New York, at a time where there are a lot of illegal drug activities. Poverty and being hungry is the motive for most of the people who are involved with the drug More...

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Oct 09, 2011

Monique rated it:

Hmm so wanted to like this book so much more than I did, first off it is subtitled Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx, and being born in the Bronx and still claim roots there I was immediately intrigued, add that to the glowing recommmendation of a librarian friend I was psyched to read this and promptly took it with me on my week long Jamaica trip to pass the time on planes and at the beach...Not my best idea, for starters this is not and I repeat not a novel, this is a work of More...

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Jun 29, 2011

Maria rated it:

Part novel, part anthropological study. Overlapping narratives that occasionally dovetailed together. It's totally confusing at first (aunts, uncles, mamis, papis, abuelitas, tias, etc...plus some random friend named Milagros that somehow ends up taking care of everyone else's kids.) Kind of like Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", but about the cycles of 3 generations of Bronx residents. Basically describes cyclical poverty in the Bronx and Troy, NY. Depicts the difficulty of poverty, crim More...

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May 01, 2011

Jan rated it:

This book, about the intertwining lives of several families in the poorest section of the Bronx, is absolutely, gut-wrenchingly devastating. Covering the span of some twelve years, the reader moves with these families through all of their terrible lows and mediocre highs. It is unflinching. No detail is too small; nothing too embarrassing or taboo to discuss. The effect is stunning.

I grew up fairly poor, poorer than nearly everybody I now currently know. I still never even came close t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 13, 2011

Eden rated it:

I can't believe it took me eight years to find this book. A writer's highest calling is the tell the stories of others -- fiction or nonfiction -- and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc heroically managed this with her expansive reportage. To commit yourself to a group of people -- any group of people, but especially ones so challenging to know and explain is remarkable. And to process so many stories and perspectives, to give them shape and remain fair and balanced in explaining their stories...it's such an More...

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Mar 04, 2011

Joyce rated it:

Poverty is not a crime. But to the people of the South Bronx in the 1980’s, it is. Poverty is a chain that binds them tightly to their places, a gun at their throats threatening to go off any second. For the characters Jessica, Coco, Boy George, and Cesar of “Random Family”, poverty is a shortcut to unfairness, chaos, and hopelessness. It has predetermined their lives, their parents’ lives, and their children’s lives. Each of their role models are beaten by boyfriends who are drug dealers, More...

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Feb 22, 2011

Dirk rated it:

I have never read a book like this before. This book is a story in a way that most stories are not. It is non-fiction, which I did not realize at the outset. But I believe that this is a necessary book.

Random Family consists entirely of plot. I have never read a book with so many characters short of the Bible or Tolkein. The narrator is not present in the book until the afterword. This is a book about very poor people. I picked up a copy of this book because a student of mine reques More...

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Jan 18, 2011

Jamie Z rated it:

One book down, 24 to go in my 2011 challenge.

This work of non-fiction reads somewhat novelistically. It's told in a very direct, reportorial style, which makes sense since it is a piece of journalism, but since much of the book is dramatized, it has the feel of fiction. And you get into the characters. For ten years LeBlanc immersed herself in the lives of her subjects, following them from the projects to the streets to delivery rooms and government offices, and, inevitably, to ja More...

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Dec 30, 2010

JuneBug rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 01, 2010

Dylan rated it:

What was the point of this book? If it was the soap-operafication of a family in the midst of poverty, then mission accomplished. This book is pure voyeurism. There is no message to be found, no subtext about the plight of the poor, and ultimately no empathy from the author for these people who have been reduced by the author to their choices (many of them poor). Reading this book I learned nothing about these people except for their decisions; nothing about their inner lives or the insitutions More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 01, 2010

Dliu rated it:

Life As You Don't Know It

What would you say if you were able to read a book about places you have never been to? Like Olympia or Neverland?
How about the Bronx of New York?
Unless you've been there or lived there, you would have no idea what the Bronx was like. Instead of taking some time out of your stressful life to go visit, you have the option of reading Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, written by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.
More...

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Jan 13, 2010

Laura rated it:

This book is incredible. I also found it extremely depressing most of the time. It really shows you the huge gap between what the world should be like and how it often is, as lived through the lives of a few poor Puerto Rican preteens in the Bronx in the 1980s. The author meticulously follows them for decades and really "gets into their heads." She simply reports what happens and how they think and feel without placing a value judgment on their actions. That can be both refresh More...

1 comment like

Aug 04, 2011

Ubersmaug rated it:

An inside glimpse into the world of poverty and everything that goes along with it... drugs, teenage pregnancy, child abuse, jail, etc. At first I was just angry at people's stupidity -- why would you have the third, fourth, fifth kid, for the love of God, when you can't feed the first one, two, three?? -- but at a certain point I just got depressed over how many hurdles were thrown at these people every single day. Lack of so many basics: money, jobs, clean housing, transportation, food, proper More...

0 comments like

Apr 08, 2010

Meg rated it:

"Random" family, in the sense of "typical"? Well, not exactly. LeBlanc actually says in the book that her subjects are NOT typical of the folks who live in their neighborhood. The illusion that what's portrayed is representative is one of this book's major flaws. The book reinforces stereotypes associated with race and class (e.g. the "welfare queen" going on a cocaine binge in a limo, the baby mama drama). LeBlanc focuses heavily on the psychological angle (wh More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 06, 2009

Amy rated it:

I have to admit I did not read this book straight through. I jumped through the chapters, reading parts that seemed interesting. I find it appropriate that I read the book the week that Sotomayor became a Supreme Court Justice. I feel that I have a better understanding of the environment (Bronx) that she came from.
I did not find anything unbelievable within the book. I hear many of the same stories at work. Downtown Kalamazoo is not the Bronx, but poverty is poverty. The drug culture More...

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Apr 05, 2011

Miranda rated it:

This book is an absolutely INCREDIBLE piece of journalism/reporting; I couldn't put it down and I didn't want it to end. LeBlanc gives amazing insight into the lives, thoughts and feelings of the people she writes about without making it oversentimental or emotional. Some of the events and situations depicted here are terribly sad but the distance of her narrator's voice, presenting everything very clearly and factually, really added to the sense of reality of the book and allows the reader to More...

2 comments like

Jul 23, 2009

Erin rated it:

I have been surprised by some of the other reviews I've read about this book commenting that they cannot believe these people make the same mistakes over and over again. While what, to you, may seem like a mistake, is in fact the only way known to the people in this book, and they face circumstances that facilitate the lifestyles they have and don't offer many paths out. The best way it was addressed, I feel, in the book was by Cesar:

"Mercedes’s predicament extended beyond perso More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 25, 2009

Khaya rated it:

This is going to sound awfully judgmental, but as I read this book I found myself composing the following mental list:

Why I am a really amazing parent:

1. I didn’t start having my family when I was 14.
2. I don’t use drugs.
3. I don’t leave my children with caretakers who use drugs.
4. I’ve never dated a drug dealer or gotten pregnant with his children.
5. I’ve never been to prison.
6. I’ve never slept with anyone with a prison record or know More...

11 comments like

Dec 12, 2008

TheAthleticPerformer rated it:

This has to be one of the most depressing, heart breaking, eye-opening books that I've ever read. It's basically the woven stories of two women, Jessica and Coco, their lives (or really, lack-there-of), the people in their lives, and their struggles. This book reads like the worst Jerry Springer episode you could possibly imagine. There is so much drug use, sex and sexual abuse that I found myself only able to digest this story in short bursts. My jaw was literally hanging open for the firs More...

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