Homeboyz, by Alan Lawrence Sitomer
Sitomer, Alan Lawrence (2007). Homeboyz. NY: Hyperion Jump at the Sun. 283 pages.
Alan Lawrence Sitomer concludes his trilogy of street lit inspired YA fiction with Homeboyz, the story of seventeen-year-old Teddy Anderson’s search for the banger who killed his sister in a drive-by shooting. Teddy’s sister’s death was an RT, RP (wrong time, wrong place) incident, and both the media cited in the novel and the novel itself take pains to emphasize the girl’s honors student and near angel status. When Teddy seriously injures some members of the gang he believes is responsible for his sister’s death, he is sent to prison and released to serve in a rehabilitative mentorship program. Convinced the program will never work, Teddy nonetheless finds himself bonding with his young mentee and eventually finding a type of closure.
I’ve been reading a lot of urban lit lately (for adults as well as the attempts made by authors to represent the genre for YAs) and I have to say: never trust a piece of YA lit posing as urban fiction and published under the auspices of Disney. This whole production (and, I have to admit, I’ve only read this one volume in Sitomer’s series) really reeks of the kind of smack Henry Giroux (my academic crush) was talking about when he wrote critically about the movie Dangerous Minds for the journals Cineaste and International Journal of Educational Reform. In the case of Sitomer’s “Hip Hop High School” series (of which Homeboyz is the third), the author himself emerges as the Michelle Pfeiffer figure, subtly guiding the characters towards the right choices while trying to maintain a type of street cred.
Sitomer’s in-text attempts to define what he presumes is outsider language, especially when he defines terms like “gangsta logic” (presented, I swear, in italics, when first introduced!), is especially alienating. By setting up a system of “logic,” life, or belief as “outside,” different, and observable in an almost anthropological sense, this book–which, as I said before, attempts the street lit style–effectively disrespects its main character. This, combined with the fact that we are never really allowed into the protagonist’s head (the story is told in the 3rd person, with few interruptions for internal monologue) and that is more told rather than shown, increases this offensive distance. To make matters worse, Sitomer has linked teaching guides for the first two books in the series (I’m sure the one for Homeboyz is coming) to his website makes me wonder which came first: the novels or the 45 page “complete literary units” that accompany these.