Honors Book Blog #3

Claude Brown was born in Harlem, New York, in 1937. He spent his childhood "roaming the streets with junkies, whores, pimps, hustlers, the 'mean cats' and the numbers runner"(pg 33.) He was a bad kid, druggie, gangbanger and served plenty of jail sentences until 1953. After that he left Harlem, after seeing a lot of friends die in drug crime, and mode to Greenwich Village, earning a living as a watch repairman. He later enrolled in night school to earn a high school diploma, then went to Howard University where he wrote this book Manchild in the Promised Land. He is the truest example of a terrible childhood turning into complete success. Something I want to be looked as when I grow up.

This book was a lot more about how this life turned him into a good person that the story of him growing up. This is a try inspiration for me because I am trying to turn the life I was giving into something great, which is sup rising hard to to considering the stories of boys I have heard with similar lives to me. As you know, I grew up not just with no dad, but with 3 main father figures coming in and out of my life whenever they pleased. This was more of a challenge that just having no dad, I had to cope with the constant fear of change and unreliability of not knowing whether I would have a father there for me or not. In this book, Claude brown shows that no matter how hard your life is, you can always overcome adversity with a positive outcome.

This completely changed my perspective on this project. I though that writing about Harlem in the 1950s would be about hard gangbangers that fought until they died. That went to jail and waited for the day they could get out, meet back with their gang and continue killing. I am starting to realize that it isn't about that, although they put up with the life they live, and act as if it is the greatest—they all want to leave. Nobody wants there life, they don't want there life. They deep down inside wished they grew up normal and had the same opportunities as everybody else.

I am starting to realize that I want the same thing, I don't want the childhood I was given. I always wanted more, a father, a reliable mother, to have my sister living anywhere near me or even to be in contact with her. I never got that, and I, like the characters I have been reading about, a, extremely jealous of people that were able to have that life. Maybe it is that fact that that has made me, and these characters, act harder than we had to. Am I really even the person I have cut myself out to be? I think I need to work on the acceptance of the life I was given. I know that because the way I grew up I have strived for success, but was it for the wrong reason? Have I been striving for success just to reach the life I never had? What kind of motive is that?

I know this was a bit off topic, however this is how I am feeling right now and there is nothing else I could possibly write about. This project, these writings, are developing something inside of me I have never achieved at school before. They are making me question life as it is, which I think I need to have a rough grasp on before I enter college. So I guess I'd like to say thank you, for making this all possible.

Honors Map and Legend

Gangsters Of Harlem, Honors Blog #2

The Gangsters of Harlem is fantastic book about, guess what, the Gangsters of Harlem. It does a great job of going through al time periods of Harlem, New York, which helped a lot for the project I will be doing. The book started in the late 1890’s when Harlem was a primarily white neighborhood, all the way until the 1980’s when it was over two-thirds African American and the crack problem was considered an “epidemic” by the United States Government.

This novel covered many different gangsters, from all different time periods. Nicky Barnes, Frank Matthews, Frank Lucas, Dutch Shultz all being some of the familiar names. However, although it went into great detail about many gangsters, it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for.

The biggest help this book was is that it made me think more about crime, not necessarily Harlem. Most of us are aware of the blood and guts that inevitably come along with crime, but few of us have a real idea of how crime actually affects a community. Our class has been about community all year, and the way crime affects it is second to none. Even with Harlem starting out as a safe area in the late 1890’s, as soon as a couple mobsters came in and the real estate market collapsed in 1900, the entire neighborhood changed. The entire placed turned into a war zone. A war zone with a downward spiral that lead to an epidemic.

I liked this book because now I know that 1950’s Harlem, my topic, didn’t just happen because of 1950’s Harlem. It started decades before that, it was built upon a generation of crime and poverty. It created a new generation of crime and poverty that I cannot wait to read into after this project.