''Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx'' is a 2003 narrative non-fiction study of urban life by American writer

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is an American journalist whose works focus on the marginalized members of society: adolescents living in poverty, prostitutes, women in prison, etc. She is best known for her 2003 non-fiction book '' Random Family''. She wa ...

Summary

The book, LeBlanc's first, took more than 10 years to research and write. ''Random Family'' is a nonfiction account of the struggles of two women and their family as they deal with love, drug dealers, babies and prison time in the

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

. LeBlanc began the long period of research after reporting on a piece in ''

Newsday ''Newsday'' is an American daily newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI", and f ...

'' about the trial of "a hugely successful heroin dealer" named

Boy George George Alan O'Dowd (born 14 June 1961), known professionally as Boy George, is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, author and mixed media artist. Best known for his soulful voice and his androgynous appearance, Boy George has been the lead singe ...

Reception

''Random Family'' was enthusiastically received by critics. In ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', critic Janet Maslin described LeBlanc's work as "a book that exerts the fascination of a classic, unflinching documentary." Mark Kramer, director of the Nieman Foundation Program on Narrative Journalism at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, praised the book's "relentless neutrality." In ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

,''

Margaret Talbot Margaret Talbot is an American essayist and non-fiction writer. She is also the daughter of the veteran Warner Bros. actor Lyle Talbot, whom she profiled in an October 2012 ''The New Yorker'' article and in her book ''The Entertainer: Movies, Magi ...

wrote, "The conventional compliment to pay a work of narrative nonfiction is to say that it's 'novelistic' or that it 'reads like fiction.' You could certainly say that of 'Random Family,' and yet there are tasks a writer like LeBlanc must accomplish that are different, and in some ways more difficult, than a novelist's. For one thing, she must remain cleareyed about people to whom she owes a tremendous debt of gratitude for admitting her into the intimacies of their lives. And for another, she must hew to a plotline that is often stuttering and circular and decidedly lacking in resolution. None of the people she writes about veer definitively toward a newer or better life — they tend toward the same tired grooves — yet she makes their stories riveting"; Talbot called LeBlanc's work, "An extraordinary book."

Awards and honors

LeBlanc and ''Random Family'' garnered several awards and nominations. Her research methods earned her a spot among several other

journalists A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and nonfiction writers in Robert Boynton's book, ''The New New Journalism.'' In 2006, LeBlanc received a MacArthur Fellowship, more popularly known as a "Genius Grant".

References

External links

Adrian Ncole LeBlanc on NPR about ''Random Family''Robert S. Boynton in ''The New Journalism'' on Adrian LeBlanc and ''Random Family''Boy George website, including LeBlanc's reporting of ''Random Family''Adrian Nicole LeBlanc website
2003 non-fiction books Books about New York City Books about education Books about the Bronx {{edu-book-stub