Book-It 'o11! Book #61
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy Duburke
Details: Copyright 2010, Lee & Low Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Eleven-year old Roger is trying to make sense of his classmate Robert "Yummy" Sandifer's death, but first he has to make sense of Yummy's life. Yummy could be as tough as a pit bull sometimes. Other times he was as sweet as the sugary treats he loved to eat. Was Yummy some sort of monster, or just another kid?
As Roger searches for the truth, he finds more and more questions. How did Yummy end up in so much trouble? Did he really kill someone? And why do all the answers seem to lead back to a gang-the same gang to which Roger's older brother belongs?
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty is a compelling graphic dramatization based on events that occurred in Chicago in 1994. This gritty exploration of youth gang life will force readers to question their own understandings of good and bad, right and wrong."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was yet another stumble-upon.
How I Liked It: I was extremely leery of the idea of a graphic novel version based on a true event that freely admits "a certain amount of fictionalization".
While the fictional character of Roger the narrator is problematic (more about that later), the book still lays out in a staggeringly honest fashion, the environment which bore, raised, and ultimately killed Robert "Yummy" Sandifer (so nicknamed for his love of sweets). The book describes tragedy, but not in a treacly fashion. It elaborates on Yummy's childlike nature, but doesn't excuse his actions. It displays the chorus of talking heads that appeared in the wake of Yummy's crime and later his death, but it doesn't rule them out as all being so much static and misrepresentation.
The character of Roger is presented in a fashion that (from some of his very dialog) is lifted from the surrounding youth at the time. In that sense, particularly as a framing device, Roger is perfect. Even his interactions with Yummy are apparently cribbed from enough real-life interactions witnesses offered in the wake of Yummy's death that they actually do serve the purpose of condensing the many accounts to present Yummy as someone we (from whom Roger is more or less a surrogate) know well.
It's actually Roger's family that can at times throw off the narrative. While his older brother runs with the Black Disciples (the gang to which Yummy belonged that ultimately killed him), he comes from a two parent home where both parents are strong participants in their children's upbringing. The parents strongly condemn the actions of the gang and Roger's brother's participation in them and it is his parents (rather than his fellow children) that urge Roger to Yummy's funeral and to sign a memorial for his victim, the slain girl only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ultimately, Roger's brother chooses his family over the gang (at least for awhile anyway) and the final shots are of the four heading home. While it is a book intended for young people and so a "happy" ending would seem expected (especially when it's stuck with a morality capper of rejecting gang life and violence), it feels somehow false.
While it's neither wise nor accurate to absolve a criminal simply based on the environment he grew up in, it's exactly where the root of Yummy's problems started, even according to the book. Born to a delinquent mother in and out of jail for numerous offenses (and a father he never knew who resided in prison), Yummy and his various siblings were eventually taken away by the state when it became clear his mother was abusing them (Yummy's scars and burns are described both in the book as he shows them off with pride and in reality as the coroner who examined his body noted) and was dumped with his mother's mother, a woman with more than thirty children and grandchildren (the book says "over twenty) in her house at any given time where drugs and prostitution were a part of life. Yummy, as the book describes, could be missing for days and not be noticed. As most sociologists will agree, children with no formal family structure tend to seek out their own, generally in the form of gangs. The book hints at this as Yummy is initiated into the Black Disciples and is given a gun to which he marvels "No one ever gave me nothin' before."
The point is, Yummy had considerably less of a choice (some would argue no choice) than Roger's brother about his entrance into gang life. He did not reject a traditional family structure (as Roger's brother did) for a way to rebel against said structure, he entered the gang for (among other things) a family structure. While using Yummy's death as a way to "scare straight" kids tempted into the life might be a positive step for the community in mourning and trying to understand, it's false to suggest that Yummy was given many options and he merely took the worst. At best, a Yummy-to-be looking down at the murdered boy in his coffin (during the heavily attended funeral by most with an agenda, whether to scare kids away from a life of violence or press feverish to capture pictures about the hot topic of the moment) is given not so much the lesson that he (or she) should not "choose" gang life so receive a jolt of awareness that they must seek to somehow rise above their environment.
Lastly, the art: it's absolutely spectacular and haunting in this book. The shadow, line work, and layering provide vivid character reactions and paint desolate cityscapes. Although working from what can only be one or two photographs of both Yummy and his victim Shavon Dean, the artist manages to capture them in a variety of shots without it ever appearing stilted. Faces hidden in shadow, the occasional well-placed dialog-less panel, and rich backgrounds that somehow manage not to overwhelm their subjects all function almost cinematically to tell the story.
While minutely flawed for reasons I've mentioned above, the book still presents a preteen-friendly story, still sorely needed seventeen years after its events.
Notable: While interviews with most relatives and those close to Yummy describe his nickname as coming from a love of cookies, Roger tucks a candy bar into Yummy's coffin, joining a pile of others.
While the book's illustrations of Yummy's funeral are spot-on down to the style of his teddy bear tucked in with him, no photographs of the funeral show this particular detail.
Title: Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy Duburke
Details: Copyright 2010, Lee & Low Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Eleven-year old Roger is trying to make sense of his classmate Robert "Yummy" Sandifer's death, but first he has to make sense of Yummy's life. Yummy could be as tough as a pit bull sometimes. Other times he was as sweet as the sugary treats he loved to eat. Was Yummy some sort of monster, or just another kid?
As Roger searches for the truth, he finds more and more questions. How did Yummy end up in so much trouble? Did he really kill someone? And why do all the answers seem to lead back to a gang-the same gang to which Roger's older brother belongs?
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty is a compelling graphic dramatization based on events that occurred in Chicago in 1994. This gritty exploration of youth gang life will force readers to question their own understandings of good and bad, right and wrong."
Why I Wanted to Read It: In my fevered search for more graphic novels from my local library, this was yet another stumble-upon.
How I Liked It: I was extremely leery of the idea of a graphic novel version based on a true event that freely admits "a certain amount of fictionalization".
While the fictional character of Roger the narrator is problematic (more about that later), the book still lays out in a staggeringly honest fashion, the environment which bore, raised, and ultimately killed Robert "Yummy" Sandifer (so nicknamed for his love of sweets). The book describes tragedy, but not in a treacly fashion. It elaborates on Yummy's childlike nature, but doesn't excuse his actions. It displays the chorus of talking heads that appeared in the wake of Yummy's crime and later his death, but it doesn't rule them out as all being so much static and misrepresentation.
The character of Roger is presented in a fashion that (from some of his very dialog) is lifted from the surrounding youth at the time. In that sense, particularly as a framing device, Roger is perfect. Even his interactions with Yummy are apparently cribbed from enough real-life interactions witnesses offered in the wake of Yummy's death that they actually do serve the purpose of condensing the many accounts to present Yummy as someone we (from whom Roger is more or less a surrogate) know well.
It's actually Roger's family that can at times throw off the narrative. While his older brother runs with the Black Disciples (the gang to which Yummy belonged that ultimately killed him), he comes from a two parent home where both parents are strong participants in their children's upbringing. The parents strongly condemn the actions of the gang and Roger's brother's participation in them and it is his parents (rather than his fellow children) that urge Roger to Yummy's funeral and to sign a memorial for his victim, the slain girl only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ultimately, Roger's brother chooses his family over the gang (at least for awhile anyway) and the final shots are of the four heading home. While it is a book intended for young people and so a "happy" ending would seem expected (especially when it's stuck with a morality capper of rejecting gang life and violence), it feels somehow false.
While it's neither wise nor accurate to absolve a criminal simply based on the environment he grew up in, it's exactly where the root of Yummy's problems started, even according to the book. Born to a delinquent mother in and out of jail for numerous offenses (and a father he never knew who resided in prison), Yummy and his various siblings were eventually taken away by the state when it became clear his mother was abusing them (Yummy's scars and burns are described both in the book as he shows them off with pride and in reality as the coroner who examined his body noted) and was dumped with his mother's mother, a woman with more than thirty children and grandchildren (the book says "over twenty) in her house at any given time where drugs and prostitution were a part of life. Yummy, as the book describes, could be missing for days and not be noticed. As most sociologists will agree, children with no formal family structure tend to seek out their own, generally in the form of gangs. The book hints at this as Yummy is initiated into the Black Disciples and is given a gun to which he marvels "No one ever gave me nothin' before."
The point is, Yummy had considerably less of a choice (some would argue no choice) than Roger's brother about his entrance into gang life. He did not reject a traditional family structure (as Roger's brother did) for a way to rebel against said structure, he entered the gang for (among other things) a family structure. While using Yummy's death as a way to "scare straight" kids tempted into the life might be a positive step for the community in mourning and trying to understand, it's false to suggest that Yummy was given many options and he merely took the worst. At best, a Yummy-to-be looking down at the murdered boy in his coffin (during the heavily attended funeral by most with an agenda, whether to scare kids away from a life of violence or press feverish to capture pictures about the hot topic of the moment) is given not so much the lesson that he (or she) should not "choose" gang life so receive a jolt of awareness that they must seek to somehow rise above their environment.
Lastly, the art: it's absolutely spectacular and haunting in this book. The shadow, line work, and layering provide vivid character reactions and paint desolate cityscapes. Although working from what can only be one or two photographs of both Yummy and his victim Shavon Dean, the artist manages to capture them in a variety of shots without it ever appearing stilted. Faces hidden in shadow, the occasional well-placed dialog-less panel, and rich backgrounds that somehow manage not to overwhelm their subjects all function almost cinematically to tell the story.
While minutely flawed for reasons I've mentioned above, the book still presents a preteen-friendly story, still sorely needed seventeen years after its events.
Notable: While interviews with most relatives and those close to Yummy describe his nickname as coming from a love of cookies, Roger tucks a candy bar into Yummy's coffin, joining a pile of others.
While the book's illustrations of Yummy's funeral are spot-on down to the style of his teddy bear tucked in with him, no photographs of the funeral show this particular detail.