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The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A… door Jeff Hobbs
This book offers a look at the juvenile justice system in a couple different U.S. states, through the in-depth stories of some of the teens in the system.
I liked it overall, especially the parts that detailed how the education system worked in the different facilities.
However, I felt it was a little long and repetitive at times, and there was a lot of profanity - and not all of it was as quotes, which I always find unprofessional. God's and Jesus' names were used as exclamations occasionally in the quotes from students.
I received a copy of this from the publisher via NetGalley.
The story is told powerfully by his college roommate, Jeff. What makes this book special is that it leaves the reader to draw their own conclusion. Is this a story of a man who just makes poor choices and squanders opportunities? Is this the story of a man whose early childhood was so fraught with trauma that it couldn't be overcome despite his intellect? Is this a story about the vagaries of luck and life decisions? Obviously, no one can really infer policy based on one person's story, but this book raises every societal question. It's truly heartbreaking, and I think the author did his best to leave judgement aside.
At the end of the book there is an interview with the author, and one thing he said really struck me. He noted how the children of the upper classes, those who have attended the best private schools and lived in expensive suburbs, really "get" that adult guidance is there for the taking and avail themselves of it frequently and without hesitation. Unfortunately, children in less fortunate circumstance, need these adults more and avail themselves of them less. In my experience, this is true, and I just wonder how those of us who have given every bit of guidance to our own children might extend ourselves further and proactively to children who truly need it. After reading this book, I intend to seek out that opportunity.
As stated in the summary, Mr. Hobbs focuses on three different stories that follow the the day-to-day lives and challenges of juveniles living in and individuals working in the juvenile justice system in San Francisco, Delaware, and New York City.
This non-fiction novel would be a good read for anyone contemplating a career in the juvenile justice system, or anyone curious about the system in general.
Sociological research can be written as formal statistical studies for scholarly journals, or as stories people told the researcher. This is a book of stories. We visit three programs for teenagers with criminal records: a prisonlike one in Delaware, one that tries to be more like prep school in California, and a day program for teens living with a parent in New York. We see the two on the East Coast through the eyes of male students, the one in California through the eyes of a female teacher. Hobbs tells their stories in a believable way, with an explanation of what is fact and what is fiction.
The stories aren't rosy, Neither are they hopeless. One of the students asks for more challenging course material at the reform school (yes, they are schools, not prisons for kids), qualifies for admission to college, but soon drops out of college--for now--to take an entry level job. The other washes out; though he has a concerned father and makes friends in an enlightened program that seems to be helping his friends, because he misses his home town. The teacher gets through the year, frustrated that she's not in a position to make more of a difference for her students.
The intended audience for this book are adults. Hobbs' phrase "early intervention" seems to presuppose government employees, though employers seem more likely to help teenagers. An additional audience may be teenagers themselves. Hobbs' decision to focus on introvert teenagers creates two readable, relatable stories that may warn teenagers against criminal behavior and may also prepare them to work or go to college with ex-offenders.
Robert Peace fitted into the common stereotype in his Newark neighbourhood in many ways - father in prison for murder, single mother doing her best to make ends meet, drink and weed consumed from an early age. But where Rob differed from his peers was his exceptional intelligence and thirst for learning, which combined with the steely determination of his mother to give him a better than average standard of education resulted in him achieving a degree from Yale. However, as the title gives away, unfortunately all did not end well for Robert Peace.
This book is exceptionally sad for so many reasons. With his Yale studies paid for by a wealthy benefactor who saw unique potential in Peace, this should have been a turning point in his life, one that opened up a whole world of opportunity. Unfortunately, however, Rob couldn't help but get in the way of himself. Discomfited by his Ivy League attainment, it was a world he felt he never fitted into, despite his immense intelligence. Whilst his peers used the opportunity as a springboard to new careers, Rob quickly succumbed to the rhythm of his old neighbourhood, finding comfort in the familiarity of menial jobs, childhood friends and easy drug dealing.
A low level dealer who generally tended to stay keep his moral compass closer to right than wrong, Peace unfortunately took a wrong turning gamble that he would ultimately pay for with his life.
It's an imperfect book that took some time to draw me in at first. Written by his white room mate from Yale, for the first part of the book it felt very obviously a privileged white person trying to write a poor black man's story, but eventually it somehow found its rhythm and a more vivid depiction of Rob and his background developed (perhaps as Hobbs was writing more about present times rather than trying to narrate his parents' back story, with better sources for detail through Rob's friends). It fell short of the journalistic authenticity that came across in Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family, but Hobbs develops the reader's interest in Peace as a person, and although I was ultimately frustrated and disappointed by Rob's choices, the close of the book still felt very emotional.
In a number of places Hobbs comments that he was failing as an author. I'm not sure it sits well with me that he took the tragedy of his friend's death as his next book writing opportunity, and whilst he tries to make the book a eulogy of sort to his friend, it seemed that Rob and he hadn't seen much of each other in the years leading up to his death, so I'm not quite sure how sincere the motives behind the book are.
Nonetheless, an interesting, tragic read.
3.5 stars - a story that pulls you in, but still.... not convinced that it's the mournful story of friendship that it purports to be.
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13942975
A fitting memorial for a remarkable short life.
The title gives away the ending, of course. Throughout this story of a brilliant young man from Newark I kept wondering: when will it happen? How will it happen? This same thing happened to others in my book club who read it. I do think it kept us pressing on, although the writing was good and the story interesting.
Robert Peace was the son of a hard-working mother and a drug-dealing father. His mother Jackie did not want to marry "Skeet" because she believed that marriage itself ultimately destroyed the union. She'd seen it too often. So while Skeet did want to marry she refused and she lived alone with her son Rob, working hard for years, her eyes on the prize.
Jackie had grown up in Newark and accepted that she would die there. She wanted more for her son. Thus she worked extra jobs and saved money whatever way she could so that she could get him out of the public school system and into private. She had seen how the teachers in the public schools had given up. They did not have much to offer her remarkably intelligent son. And thus she did finally get him into a Catholic school, St. Benedict's, where he made friends and excelled at school work as well as water polo. He didn't forget his friends from public school, however.
Incredibly driven himself, Robert made the most of what his mother obtained for him. When he started at St. Benedict's he could not swim. But he put up with the humiliation of learning and eventually became a star player on the water polo team. His memory and ability to absorb information was phenomenal. His father had an especially good memory too, but less of an interest in using it to educate himself.
Robert did so well that he actually had his choice of ivy league schools as he approached graduation from high school. He ultimately landed in Yale, although his first choice had been Johns Hopkins.
What happened to Robert might well be a life lesson for others. When one grows up with few privileges and is suddenly thrown into a world where privilege is an accepted norm, adjustment can be difficult or impossible. Robert was friendly, easily liked, but ultimately during his time at Yale he was "fronting". He hated when others acted like they were something other than what they were, yet he hid his real self as needed.
Robert made real friends at Yale, as he did wherever he went. It was one of his roommates who wrote this book.
It appears that it was Robert's determination to provide for others - and be seen as someone who does provide - that proved his ultimate downfall. He wanted to give his mother a pleasant retirement. He wanted to get his dad out of prison. He wanted to help others. He didn't have many needs himself, even continued to drive an old beater no matter his income.
You can take the boy out of Newark but can you take Newark out of the boy? The draw of his home town was too great, and the way of the streets too compelling, the boyhood friendships too strong. Even after he spent time in Rio, living there and loving it, knowing there is another world if he wants it, he couldn't escape.
It's all too easy to fall into the comforting fallacy that bad things only happen to bad people, that anyone involved in criminal acts must be a thug.
We want to believe that good people don't do bad things.
Robert Peace was a good man—kind, caring, devoted, smart and curious. The decisions he made over the course of his 30 year life were driven by good motives. But still he made some bad decisions that brought him to a bad end.
What The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace reveals that things aren't as simple as good or bad. This man's life can't be reduced to any sort of pat dichotomy.
Too often when we talk about issues of poverty, race, drug culture, and violence in our society, we forget that real and complicated people lie at the heart of these problems. We argue about these issues in the abstract and don't stop to think about the actual people who choose to do these things, the day-to-day reality of those who have live and cope in the midst of these dangers.
All of these social problems have human faces. They're the consequence of decisions and actions undertaken by individuals within a community. Real people live and die, prosper or fail as a result.
The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is important precisely because it's a human story—the author doesn't allow it to generalize into the worn tropes of standard public debate. It's a story that can't be summed up with easy explanations or obvious answers. This is the story of one person, complex and contradictory and flawed like the rest of us. This is the story of the decisions he made, with the best of intentions but for complex and contradictory and flawed reasons. Ultimately, this is the story of the consequences of those decisions.
His decisions, like anyone else's, were embedded in a time and place that was powerfully influenced by larger cultural, economic, and political forces. But his story reminds us that these forces matter because of how they affect real people in their daily lives.
These are complicated issues—as complicated as humanity itself—and there are no simple explanations for them. It does everyone a disservice when we forget that.
The story of Robert Peace reminds us.
Instead, I had the gnawing feeling that it was so wrong that Hobbs is profiting off the life and sad death of a friend he hadn't seen in 5 years. Hobbs often mentions his own short- comings as a writer and provider and bemoans his disappointment that a Yale diploma didn't have the cachet he expected.
That being said, the book was well- written and not preachy at all. And it seems that Jeff truly cared about his friend.
I highly recommend it.
I felt so much for Rob, being only a year younger we confronted the same zeitgeist, but my upbringing, barely half a country away from his was so disparate, it could've been too separate worlds. I appreciate Jeff Hobbs, Rob's Yale roommate, so much for introducing us to such an amazing young man, giving others the chance to mourn him, and hopefully motivate us to change things in this country for those who come after. A very moving, poignant, and heartbreaking tribute.
The author of this book details his life with Peace and his own development as a college student that became a novelist. “This book is written like a novel” is a common compliment given to non-fiction books, but in this case it would not be a compliment, or at least how Hobbs composed this book. Though I am impressed by how thorough his research was in the retelling of Peace’s life, I found myself cringing at the times that a chapter would end with a cliffhanger referring to the ending of a person’s life. In a novel this manipulation keeps a reader coming back for more. In non-fiction it makes the reader think that author’s goal is to keep the reader in suspense and dance around their emotions, rather than just report the events in a straight forward manner.
A good book that I would recommend to the teen readers of our library, though I might worry about preconceived stereotypes being confirmed by uncareful readers.
The book description reveals the subject matter pretty well, so I won't get into it here, but it was indeed a tragic story, and a very important one- full of lessons and questions.
The writing was superb. Very engaging, honest, provoking at times, and witty at points. Hobbs describes the characters well; you feel as if you know them personally.
I think I want to own this book and re-read it. I'm now moving on to
A hope in the unseen : an American odyssey from the inner city to the Ivy League , to get another view.
I know the book is very serious. But I still got a good chuckle every time the narrator, a struggling writer, gets invited out to a posh restaurant with his rich friends. The portions are so small that he has to look for a Wendy's or a McDonalds after they part company because his stomach is still growling. I think I remember he said something about the chicken breast was the size of his thumb, or something like that. Is it just me, or is it true that at some of the lower-price restaurants that poorer people go to have the biggest portions of food?
Maybe if you are rich you are expected to be going on a diet, but if you are poor, you could just go ahead and stuff your face.
I'm sure that's not what the point of restaurants is all about, but it's my idle thoughts getting the best of me.
Authors often pick a name for their characters that is a strong clue to their character, and I suppose I was asking myself throughout the book, like most readers would, if Ethan Hoevel is how evil? Completely through and through evil, or just a complete jerk. I guess I will be thinking about this for the next three or four days until the effect of the book starts to wear off. (And I move on to some other book.)
Another thought that keeps going through me head is that if anyone deserved the sad fate of Aiden, Ethan's brother, it should have been Ethan who would be in line for that kind of justice. But people like Ethan are so vigilant for their own interests that they would likely never fall into the same abyss that Ethan was careless enough to stumble into.
But we already know that only the good die young.
The only caveat I will add to my review is that,at least for me, this 400 page book read like double that. The writing was very,very good but also incredibly dense. This book requires a commitment from the reader;I found it to be worth the effort.
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