Bronxwood (review)

While Tyrell's pops was in prison (see Tyrell), sixteen-year-old Tyrell used his DJing equipment to earn enough money to pay rent, but he wasn't able to get his eight-year-old brother, Troy, out of foster care—only his father can do that. As a result, Tyrell is deeply ambivalent about his father's return; since he himself has been taking on a man's responsibilities, he won't go back to living under his father's authority, but he really wants Troy out of the system. Meanwhile, he also wants a new girlfriend after Novisha betrayed him, and he's got his sights set on Adonna, even though she has never dated a guy from Bronxwood. Tyrell is clean, though, and he has so far resisted joining his best friend Cal's family's drug-trafficking operation, even though he lives with Cal and his brother. As he thought, his father comes home with plans to take up where he left off, running Tyrell's life and demanding absolute obedience under the threat of physical violence, and Tyrell is left with no good options. The heartbreak here is that Tyrell has no positive role models as he tries to figure out what he wants from a relationship and what he wants from and for himself as a man; his father is manipulative and abusive, his friends are beaten down by their own older brothers, and most of the girls he meets, as well as his own tragically irresponsible mom, are just as lost as he is as they try to get what they can out of the men in their lives. As in Tyrell, Tyrell tells his own story in language that never misses in its gritty authenticity; his sexual desires and their satisfactions are laid bare as are his emotional frustrations as he tries to successfully negotiate and perhaps escape a world that has defeated all of the adults in his life in one way or another.