Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx (Scribner, 2003) is a compelling nonfiction book that delivers an incredibly honest and thought-provoking look into a dysfunctional family plagued with drugs, sexual abuse, crime and murder. This book is truly amazing.
The book begins in the mid 1980s and focuses on Jessica, a very misguided girl in the South Bronx who continually makes the wrong life choices. Love and a man’s acceptance are first and foremost on her list of priorities. Her children and family are secondary, and her self-destructive actions lead her to prison. Low self-esteem and self-worth are the primary causes of her downfall. She was sexually abused as a child and continues to be the victim of abuse throughout her teens and into adulthood.
Meanwhile her mother is slowly, with the help of cocaine, sucked into a chaotic lifestyle. It really doesn’t help that the family lives on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, where the drug trade is booming. As a result her mother withdraws from raising Jessica, her siblings and her grandchild—Jessica’s daughter. Jessica’s mother’s dependency on cocaine pushes away Jessica’s stepfather, the only close-to-levelheaded person in their lives. Her eldest brother doesn’t bother to care about where his misguided family members are going, and he moves out once he is able.
At 15, Jessica’s homebody younger sister follows in her footsteps and gets pregnant. Young mothers seem to be the norm in this family. Jessica’s youngest and favorite sibling, Cesar, continually behaves like a thug. He is smart but never focuses on school. The streets are his home, and at the age of 14 he is on his way to becoming a father.
The twists and turns of Jessica’s and her family’s lives are developed eloquently. This is definitely not the stereotypical “hood” story of boy gets girl pregnant, boy’s big dreams are shattered, boy is enticed by the drug business, and eventually boy gets thrown into jail. This story goes much deeper into people’s lives.
Random Family is deliberate and well thought out. After developing Jessica and her family, LeBlanc introduces other characters only after providing their backgrounds. In this way, the author gives us a chance to understand these people and where they’re coming from prior to their relationships with Jessica and her family. This could have been tedious for the reader, but the way LeBlanc develops these characters makes their background seem essential.
For instance, Jessica’s life changes when she meets Boy George, a major heroin dealer. When LeBlanc introduces Boy George and CoCo, Cesar’s girlfriend, their background information is so interesting that if we didn’t know it we would feel cheated.
I also appreciated LeBlanc’s ability to get so much information and develop the story so well. She does a good job of keeping your interest while she sprinkles in pertinent information. My question for LeBlanc is, “How did you get so much detailed information?” This makes the reader feel as though she were there for all of it, as if she were a family member.
Clearly, LeBlanc’s subjects are very troubled. They are the complete opposite of what American society would accept as a thriving family. LeBlanc, as the writer with no ties to the family, does not judge or exploit them. Jessica could have been portrayed in such a way that a reader would despise her. By explaining Jessica’s past with a deceased father who never accepted her and whose family continues to embrace her older brother yet disregard her existence, we understand why she behaves the ways she does. She physically abandons her own children by coming in and out of their lives, and she mentally abandons them by mistreating them and not consistently being involved in their development. Cesar has no direction. His father, a drug dealer, plants drugs on him to avoid being charged with possession if the police should arrest him. Through my reading I could tell that LeBlanc had a certain place in her heart for Jessica and her daughters and even Cesar, but it still seems as though she does not hold anything back from the reader.
The title Random Family fits well with the story line. Jessica continues to make different homes for herself. She moves from home to home throughout the book. Finally, when she has an apartment of her own, she uses it as storage and stays with her mother once again. She can’t be alone.
When she lives with Boy George, she makes sure to keep up the house and cook for him with the idea that if she behaves like his wife she’ll eventually become his wife—even though he is already married. This trait is not surprising because she never had a relationship with her late father. Acceptance is key for her when it comes to her relationships with men. Her dream is to be a real girlfriend, at least a man’s No. 1 woman with a family. In moving from place to place, she always finds herself randomly making a family wherever she lands—even in prison.
Through Random Family, LeBlanc tells you what happens inside the poverty- stricken cities of America. Often the majority of people don’t realize what is actually taking place in the ghettoes of America. We get caught up in our own lives and don’t realize what is going on until one of our children becomes influenced in some way or another. This book makes a point of telling a real story that many might not be prepared to hear.
In my neighborhood in Englewood, N.J., there are teenagers making trips to Washington Heights and the Bronx to get their hands on their drugs of choice. In the book, Boy George sets up his business in a Bronx location that is easy for his customers coming in from New Jersey. The drugs come from somewhere, and someone allows them into the country. Officials continually look the other way as long as they’re getting paid enough. Meanwhile, the people in our cities are left to destroy each other.
Shayna Lym is a Rutgers-Newark student. Posted January 2006.
