"Random Family," by Adrian LeBlanc

The book Random Family is a non-fiction book that gives readers a true understanding of the devastating cycle of poverty that many people in this world face. Written by Adrian LeBlanc, it is a coming of age story that dives into topics including addiction, incarceration, and love. As Columbia University School of the Arts describes it, it focuses mainly on two young women whose lives and families are shaped by social inequality. In preparation to write this book, LeBlanc actually observed and interviewed these people, trying to understand what their lives were like and how theirs were different from the mainstream American life. She spent around ten years immersing herself in the lives of Jessica and Coco. She is an American author and journalist who tends to focus on issues regarding life in poverty, whether it be adolescent or adult. 

The story mainly follows two women, Jessica and Coco, in two interconnected families. The plot is hard to describe, as there are multiple plot lines. Additionally, it’s not really like a story where there is a problem, a conflict, and a solution. It depicts people’s lives which have many ups and downs even in a single day. Random Family is a story that depicts the everyday struggles of living in poverty, especially for women. Readers learn about abuse and incarceration and, especially for privileged people, how living in poverty is like living in a completely different world. It magnifies the struggle of having things that are considered bare minimum contrasted to the average American who doesn’t even realize the luxury of being able to buy new shoes every year. Basically, it follows their everyday lives and occurrences and shows how they are different from the average American person’s. Jessica is a charismatic girl who grows up in the Bronx where she is surrounded with instability in all areas. She is very much so characterized by the other women in her life because they had all been abused at some point. This creates a need for male attention for Jessica. When she’s a teenager she gets involved with Boy George, a captivating drug dealer who runs a Heroin empire, bringing her into a world of drugs, excitement, and violence. She is a young mother of four which adds a lot on top of this, especially with George being an absent father. George is quite abusive, both physically and mentally/emotionally. In the middle of the book, George is arrested because of his job, dragging Jessica along with him because of her involvement with him. While in prison she actually matures a lot and is released after around ten years with the intention of making things right with her kids, who she doesn’t really have a relationship with anymore due to her time away from them. When she is released George is still in prison so she focuses on her present life and not the past where she was abused by him. She never escapes the cycle of poverty she’s stuck in but does her best to put her eldest daughter, Serena, on the right track to getting out of the Bronx and poverty itself. 

For me, Random Family was the kind of book that I didn’t necessarily enjoy the process of reading but can look back on and say I’m very glad I read it. The only reason why I say this is because I lean more towards fast-paced books and thought this book moved very slowly. However, I think it is really important for everyone to understand what life is like for some people in poverty and this book really delivers that message. I also thought it was written very well. It doesn’t feel like a non-fiction book because of the extent that Adrian LeBlanc truly understood these people. It read more like a realistic fiction novel than a report or biography. It includes very dense themes, as mentioned before, so if you are looking for something easy and light to read where you don’t have to really pay attention to every word this probably isn’t for you. However, if you're looking to get educated and don’t need a fast-moving plot to stay interested, I highly recommend it. The life that a lot of mainstream Americans live in is sheltered. A lot of people, including me, are oblivious to what's going on even just in other parts of the US. I certainly thought I knew what poverty was until I read this book and realized how different it was from my imagination. I think what most I realized while reading this book is that you don’t have to be super wealthy to be privileged. It's taken me this long to understand that and that I only figured it out because of this book. Therefore, I think this is a very valuable read that teaches more about our world than anything else.