Renegade Dreams Analysis

Eastwood and Harlem, both small neighborhoods in America, are weighed down by the world’s view of them; poor, predominantly black, violent and in need of “help” (Ralph 9). In Renegade Dreams, Ralph tells the story of activists, gang leaders, patients and teenagers while constantly refusing to portray them as victims. He gives us a glimpse into Eastwood, “a community that was battered but far from beaten.” Caught in the bonds of racism and poverty, the Fontenelles appeared Parks’ article A Harlem Family, in Life Magazine. Through his photography Parks shows families within a community facing interlocking political and economic problems. With examples from Ralph’s Renegade Dreams and Parks’ The Fontenelle Family, I use Feminist theorist, Marylyn …show more content…
Most of Fontenelle children were either incarcerated or affected injured by drugs and violence. However, gang violence is a theme that is much more explicitly discussed in Renegade Dreams. The gang’s own foundational belief that the unity of the gang depends on the obligation to repay every debt with violence is another “wire” that traps people in a cage of violence. Frye claims that one caught in this “booby trap” of obstacles, “You can’t win. You are caught in a bind, caught between systematically related pressures” (Frye 3). This entraps them within a never-ending cycle of violence. Teenagers like Marcus who have friends that are gang members also get sucked into the violence. When he is assaulted by another gang his friends are ready to retaliate and look to Marcus for support. Marcus, who respects and cares about his mother refused to be a part of the retaliation. Marcus frees himself from this cycle of violence but in the process, he loses all of his friends because they believe that he has deserted the gang. Members like Danny and Blizzard who cannot cut loose from the knights “run from law enforcement to their gang leader’s garage, only to flee back to police custody, eventually returning to the juvenile detention center.” (Ralph …show more content…
To help the Fontenelles, enough money was collected to but them a small house in Long Island. Soon after an accidental fire in the new house killed Mr. Fontenelle and one of the children leaving behind behind a single mother and a grief-stricken family. In this context Parks explains the problem of social work saying, 'The problem in documenting a family like that, is that, you wonder, in the end, whether you should have touched the family, or just left them alone. ' Similarly, the hundreds of social service organizations seem to be very ineffective in Eastwood. At times even the most active institution the Eastwood Community Church, causes divisions and obstacles in the