Random Family Summary

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After reading the first five chapters of Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc I was completely heartbroken by all of the incidents that these young people have to endure. LeBlanc painted a vivid picture of the hard life that young female and males go through in the Bronx everyday. Jessica was born into a life that did not prepare her for success. What it did was put her in a position where she would stay in the neighborhood and live the same life as many of the women in her community. Not knowing what love is, so searching for it in boys, wanting money and getting it illegally, and then ending up pregnant or in jail. Now I am going to tell you a couple themes that I repeatedly saw in these chapters. The first theme that I noticed is the vulnerability. I say this because almost every single female in this story so far has been vulnerable to a man. For …show more content…
In this community I realized that the men in the book were the ones out on the street dealing drugs or doing other illegal activities. While the women were expected to be home taking care of the kids, cleaning and cooking. For example, Lourdes was the one who would make sure that Big Daddy had food to eat before and after dinner. When Lourdes was doing that, Big Daddy was supporting the family. Once Lourdes could not fulfill her duties and decided to choose drugs over Big Daddy he left and the family went back to living in complete poverty. Another reason why the gender roles in the story stuck out to me was because it said, “a boy who dealt drugs and helped his mom and kids was better than a boy who was greedy and spent income on himself; the same went for girls and their welfare check (p.32).” This neighborhood believe that no matter what it took to help support your family you did it, regardless of the