Random Family

Serena, Jessica’s firstborn, is the most narratively significant of all of Jessica’s daughters, and also the only one with whom Jessica is able to forge a lasting and deep bond. She is sexually abused as a young girl and separated from her mother—all before the age of four. For most of her early childhood, she appears as a burdened and morose figure. Her earliest parental attachment is to Lourdes, as Jessica is initially too wild and engaged in her life with Boy George to fully and truly be her mother. During Jessica’s incarceration, Serena is mothered by Milagros, while Coco also tracks the girl’s development. Puma, her father, is largely absent, and he is then killed during a drug dispute before Serena reaches adolescence. She spends much of her childhood in the shadows, but eventually blossoms into an opinionated and assertive young woman. Although it is not included in the diegetic of the narrative, LeBlanc notes that Serena becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen. The run-up to her pregnancy is marked by the rituals of girlhood and sexuality common to her forebears, including early initiation into a sexual economy which marks her as a sexual object during pre-adolescence, the weighing of the relative benefits and drawbacks of the sexual attentions of various men and boys, and the warnings and regulations from mother figures (in Serena’s case, the figure is predominantly Milagros—Jessica mostly embraces and encouragesthe girl’s early sexuality, while eventually feuding with her about the boy who ostensibly fathers Serena’s child). Serena also astutely recognizes the labors of the women who raised her—noting Milagros’s incredible strength and generosity, the joyful and open haven of caring that Coco provides, and her mother’s earnest love) even if she does not share her insightful observations to their faces. Serena is also Jessica’s emotional anchor during Jessica’s time in prison, as she provides a reason to hope for a future beyond the bars. Through the character of Serena, LeBlanc expresses both the tender joys and the harrowing difficulties that characterize experiences of all of the women in the simultaneously small and large community that the characters inhabit. 

One of the first images of Cesar, Lourdes’s favored son, sees him as a young boy, weeping on the front steps of his mother’s apartment building, as he suffers from a toothache. This is the manner in which Rocco first encounters him and it is also the enduring memory that Rocco recites to Cesar’s children towards the end of the book. This enduring image of innocence and vulnerability serves as a poignant counterpoint to the destiny in which Cesar eventually finds himself engulfed. After persistently courting a “thug life” on the street and his participation in various street crews composed of other young men like him, who have been shunned by both the immediate institutions and American society at large, Cesar endures a stint in juvenile detention. But that detention pales in comparison to the arduous years that he will eventually serve in maximum-security prisonfor the accidental murder of his best friend, Mighty. While incarcerated, the intelligent, sensitive, and insightful Cesar will largely maintain his macho waysas he berates Coco and issues demands on both her and his other women, but he will also grow into a deep and subtle understanding of his own social and racial position and condition. He speaks for himself about the way in which the pain of parental neglect pushed him toward finding meaning and belonging in the streets, and the callous emotional and psychological abandonment of institutions that would rather punish his wrongdoing rather than find the cause and root of his acting out played a large role in his fate. However, this is not to say that Cesar views himself as a victim without agency, as he does take responsibility for himself, and for bettering his life—as much as he can do so from behind bars. It is also significant that, prior to his incarceration, he does not touch any drugs. However, the stress and trauma of solitary confinement and fights with other inmates drives him to start using heroin. Through this detail, LeBlanc asks us to consider the selfsame insights about institutional neglect that Cesar offers about his own life, and to open investigation on the cycles of criminalization and trauma that the state itself produces and exacerbatesin the name of both punishment and “crime control.”  

Coco first appears to us through the haze of an image of love and romance. She spots the handsome Cesar, donning a red jacket, as he rides his bike on the block beneath the window from which she gazes. This tender and passionate first love will exercise a significant influence on her life, as she is pulled between loyalty to Cesar and a desire to please him, and bold assertion of her own rights as a woman and a human being. While the book is ostensibly about Jessica, Coco’s indomitable joy, will to life, and ability to create not only a physical home but an emotional home for her children and nieces quietly breathes inexorable life into the narrative. As LeBlanc herself notes in the Authors Note at the end of the book, others within the community found LeBlanc’s dedication to depicting Coco’s life puzzling, as she was perceived as “just regular,” and her struggles common to or even lesser than any number of other women in her vicinity (406). Leblanc decisively recognizes Coco’s unique gifts, however, and resolutely deems the young woman’s grit, courage, and mirth eminently worthy subjects. The narrative sees Coco valiantly struggling against poverty, with her bottomless generosity as one of her only failings. Too, the young woman’s occasional rebellious streak makes intermittent appearances, as the circumstances of both poverty and motherhood have clearly interrupted any childhood innocence or impulsiveness to which she might have laid claim. Overall, LeBlanc’s depiction of Coco sparkles with complex humanity, and it provides a window into the young woman’s singular and distinct struggles and joys. In so doing, LeBlanc reveals her own sensitivity and compassion, and her unwillingness to veer into caricature or oversimplifications of a demographic that is too often overlooked or fetishized in mainstream media and discourse. 

Mercedes is Coco and Cesar’s firstborn child. She, like virtually all of the women and girls around her, suffers sexual abuse before the age of five. Undoubtedly, this trauma has a bearing on her becoming what Coco terms a “problem child.” Also, however, it is through Mercedes’s character that LeBlanc makes the observation that children that are perceived as “bad” are actually seen positively, as their rebelliousness and spunk speak to a vibrancy and fighting spirit that the adults know will come in handy when facing the harsh realities of life in the Bronx. Interestingly, however, this “badness” ceases to be an asset when children reach the threshold at which they begin courting the attention of the police and other authority figures stemming from the state. This, also, provides crucial insight into the racial and socioeconomic contexts which dictate and surround the subjects of Random Family. Coco’s ultimate insight that Mercedes’s rebellious ways are caused by the pain of her father’s absence speak to the cyclical nature of Bronx life, and its entrapments. Cesar, upon poring over his daughter’s school disciplinary records, recognizes himself—and his own responses to neglect and abandonment—in her behavioral troubles. The inability of the adults around her to fully address the root causes of her problems, and the opaque, inscrutable, and dehumanizing specter of the state, ultimately collude in shaping her temperament—just like they did for Cesar. 

We see Lourdes age from a young woman uneasy with the mothering and grandmothering responsibilities foisted upon her to an older woman struggling with failing health, and still bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend, and between broken-down or illegal apartments. Never able to fully occupy the role of mother and caretaker that both Jessica and Cesar hunger for, Lourdes is largely depicted as bound by her cocaine addiction, the abuse of men, and the scourge of poverty. Her temper can be volatile and shockingly brutal, as she is not above beating and hitting her children and grandchildren, most notably Jessica and Mercedes. However, she, like all of the people that LeBlanc chooses to focus on, is afforded a measure of complexity and humanity in her depiction. Although both of her children view her infrequent prison visits as a product of their mother’s selfishness or inability to extricate herself from her daily life, Lourdes is actually a deeply sensitive, emotional, and empathetic person who finds the horror of prison extremely difficult to bear.