“Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble & Coming of Age in the Bronx”
by Adrian Leblanc
Published: February 2003
ISBN: 0684863871

(Updated: October 29, 2004.)

This book packed a punch!

A journalist’s account of the following of a few people in their lives over a period of seven years. The story starts with a 16 year-old then living “on one of the poorer blocks in a very poor section of the Bronx”. It is quite a telling.

My “couldn’t wait to get back to it” factor for this book is 4 out of 5 hearts. And… my distress at being dropped at the end of the book — meaning understanding that the words have run out but that these people lives are ongoing and I no longer have “news” — is even higher. Truly. Still can’t quite come to terms with that. It is impossible to get to know these people — despite the fact that they are perhaps, indeed a “random family” — and not be interested, not have opinions, not question what “I” can do, not question what “we” can do. In short it is impossible to not care.

There is a section on the web site for this book entitled “How to Help”. But, most frustratingly, it is “currently under construction”. I would like to know, read, participate in this discussion and effort. Maybe the “under construction” is due to, in part, the fact that helping can’t be an easy issue to de-construct. The telling is of a “random family” but it is told through a completely personal accounting. Wanting to help these individuals seems what? Patronizing maybe. Despite the sincerity. But there must be ideas and ways to satisfy the want to help larger. Mustn’t there?