From the Ghetto Up…
WHEN THE New York Times ran a special digital supplement where they asked some notably avid readers to share the books that accompanied them through 2016, Junot Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her named a graphic novel among his choices.
Ghetto Brother - Warrior to Peacemaker by Julian Voloj and Claudia Ahlering, and published by NBM in the USA was the book chosen by Díaz who described it as “a gem.”
An engrossing and counter view to one of the most dangerous elements of American urban history, the graphic novel tells the true story of Benjy Melendez, son of Puerto-Rican immigrants, who founded, at the end of the 1960s, the notorious Ghetto Brothers gang.
From the seemingly bombed-out ravages of his neighbourhood, wracked by drugs, poverty, and violence, he managed to extract an incredibly positive energy from this riot ridden era: his multi-racial gang promoted peace rather than violence.
After initiating a gang truce, the Ghetto Brothers held weekly concerts on the streets or in abandoned buildings that fostered the emergence of hip-hop. Melendez also began to reclaim his Jewish roots after learning about his family’s dramatic crypto-Jewish background.
“Like the borough in which it is set, Ghetto Brother contains multitudes,” Díaz declared, “The book is also a history of the multi-racial Bronx, of its black and Puerto Rican communities, of its youth gangs, of hip-hop’s rise from the gang truce that Benjy helped to forge, and finally it is the story of Benjy’s awakening to his family’s hidden Jewish faith. Starkly drawn, boldly told.”
A 128 page black and white trade paperback, Ghetto Brother - Warrior to Peacemaker features an introduction by Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation and is available in print and digitally from NBM.
Sponsored by Target Media.
