Rating: 
Summary: Eye-opening true story
Review: This was an eye-opening story for a white middle-class midwesterner. I could not wait to continue reading even though it was getting sadder and sadder. It made me want to go to the inner city and take all the babies away before they could be corrupted and ignored by their parents.
Rating:
Summary: Recommend Reading -
Review: This book was very well written and interesting. It is a powerful example of the failings of our social economic system. I would highly recommend this to privileged Americans whom are so far removed from the reality of so many peoples lives. Taken a step back, it provides as a cruel reality of the quick expansion of the underclass.The book shows how out social system fails those in it. It if you compare it to the book 'The Color of Water', we can see divergent results coming from families of the same social economic background. We would hope that our politicians use this and other books, such as "The Corner" both well researched back ground as pause to how ineffective our spending is.
Rating: 
Summary: Where was Adrian?
Review: This book has all the drama of a novel.... there is so much detail provided that I often felt as the story was a continuing narrative of the life of a friend. However, the author provides no information about her own interactions with Coco, Jessica, and others. Where was she when they needed a loan to feed their children for the weekend? Where was she when Coco needed a babysitter so she take Pearl to the doctor? More and more authors are revealing themselves, because the ways they interact with their interviewees affect what they are told. The total absence of Adrian seemed forced and artificial.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking!
Review: This is one of the most extraordinary books I have ever read. I had to stay home from work one day because I could not put it down. It certainly demonstrates that the people who make policies and rules for social issues are in a different galaxy from the people they are ostensibly trying to improve, if not help.
Rating:
Summary: Captivating read!
Review: Although the book is a little lengthy, I couldn't put it down. The stories of Jessica and Coco are so intriguing that you can't wait to see what happens next, and there's always something going on. I can't believe the author followed the characters around for more than 10 years. The book is easy to read and understand. I have two minor issues while reading this: 1) there are so many characters that you'd need a family tree the size of a redwood to remember them all, and 2) the novel ended so abruptly that you wonder what has happened since. This is an amazing novel by a first time author. I highly suggest!
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but here's a better book
Review: This book is good but I felt that the characters were one-dimensional for the most part. You won't waste your time by reading this book but if you read only one non-fiction book in this genre make it THE CORNER: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, by David Simon & Edward Burns.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book made a number of Top 10 list in 2003 but I beg to differ. It's maddeningly difficult to keep track of the sprawling cast of characters (particularly if you leave the book for a while). A "Dramatis Personae" would be very useful. The book is a not much more that a descriptive chronology with too few observations and distillations by the author. It's also long and the story could have been effectively told with 50% fewer pages. Given that the subjects' lives are not inherently that interesting, Le Blanc needs to add something. After while it all starts to blur and, in the absence of an thematic development by the author, you wonder why are wading through this.
Rating:
Summary: Mahogany Book Club Best Non Fiction Award 2003
Review: We voted this Best Non Fiction for 2003.
Review is under member topazzz6
An oustanding novel!
Rating:
Summary: couldn't put it down...
Review: This book has to be one of the best books I have ever read. Truly captivating, funny, sad,and poignant. This story takes you through all the emotions and leaves you wanting to know more about the characters and what has now become of them. I wish the book would just keep going. I absolutely loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: the Complexity of Poverty
Review: The title says it all; love, drugs, trouble, and coming of age in the Bronx is what this compelling book is all about. At the heart of the book is the story of two women, Jessica and Coco, whom LeBlanc follows from their teen-age years into their thirties. The reader becomes familiar with their complex, extended families and in time, their men and their children. LeBlanc, a journalist with a background in law and sociology, leaves no stone unturned in portraying inner-city life. The amount of detail may seem overwhelming, but in time it all fits into place and serves to enrich the story. Jessica's long-term relationship with Boy George, a successful heroin dealer who ends up in jail, and Coco's with Cesar, Jessica's younger brother, who also is incarcerated, are the keystones on which the narrative rests. LeBlanc never oversimplifies or talks down to the reader, nor does she resort to platitudes about poverty, welfare, and the failings of the underclass. The reader gets to know these women intimately, and to feel both frustration at their failures and admiration for their temporary victories over themselves and their circumstances. As I read, I wanted them desperately to succeed, and yet when they didn't, I understood.
In the end, then, this is a heartbreaking book because there seem no easy solutions in sight, only victims. It's pretty obvious that Coco and Jessica's many children are only going to suffer the same fate as their mothers, that they too will struggle endlessly against their lot in life.
| 
