The alphabet of poverty runs through the Bronx of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s reporting, an impenetrable maze of bureaucracy behind the jumble of letters. You want the WIC, it’ll help feed your babies, but fear the BCW, which could take them away. SSI will send you a check, the DEA will send you to prison.
After immersing herself into the day and night struggles of an extended family in the ghetto, LeBlanc emerged eleven years later on intimate terms with what it means to be poor in urban America. Where stoned grandmothers barely care for their teenaged daughters’ too many kids. Where sons follow the trajectories of fathers, who wind up dead, or in prison. It’s fact that reads like fiction. A Random Family you come to know too well.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc will be reading
tonight at the Harvard Bookstore, 6:00 p.m. click on the link for details.
Guests:
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, journalist and author, “Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx”