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Chocolate Sangria by Tracy Price-Thompson:
A Book Review by Seneca
seneca@excapethematrix.com
This is a story about two sets of friends whose separate lives are about to collide. Everything happens so quickly that there is no time to think about anything except for the moment at hand. At least, that is how the book comes across. The lives of black friends Juanita and Scooter, and Puerto Rican friends Conan and Jorge, are revealed. This book attempts to explore the boundaries of personal identity and awareness and also interracial intimacy and friendships. It walks you through their very innocent childhood and right into their very grown-up mistakes, dilemmas and dangers.
The story starts with Juanita being born to a rich
white teenaged girl and her family’s gardener, a poor
Haitian-American teenaged boy. While in progress, the secret
birth is discovered by the family’s maid, an older black woman
named Hattie. Hattie is asked by the girl to take her baby and
raise it for her because she knows her parents would simply
never understand. So now it’s Hattie’s task to raise this
green-eyed, light-skinned, slightly overweight and often teased
child. Being raised in the same Brooklyn project, Juanita meets
her new best friend, the introverted, newly-transplanted and
complicated Scooter. They began a sort of cliché friendship of
coming to each others’ rescue just in the brink of time when one
is facing danger. They learn
each other’s weaknesses and strengths. Scooter discovers
Juanita’s penchant for food and she discovers that he is
attracted to the same thing she is…boys. As young adults Juanita
and Scooter’s routine lives and friendship absorb a bump. While
on their daily city bus ride they meet the gregarious Conan and
the very charming Jorge. The two (of course) both have their own
troubled pasts to bring to the tale. Conan is still suffering
his brother’s death and the once-abused Jorge would be
completely self-absorbed if it wasn’t for his unhealthy
attachment to his best friend, Conan.
While Juanita and Scooter were looking for something else outside of their tight bond, they find it in Conan and Jorge. Juanita is almost at once enamored with Conan and goes against her aunt Hattie’s wishes to date him. Thereafter, Jorge uses his sex appeal to start a raunchy relationship with Scooter in order to accomplish a hidden agenda. The lies fly, the love and lust soar, and expeditiously [quickly] misunderstandings threaten to tear both friendships apart. Juanita must find her true identity and learn to love herself. Conan has to forgive himself. Scooter has to learn to respect himself and Jorge simply must die.
While some portions of this book are thrilling, I found that I was left on the fence when trying to decide if I completely liked it. It’s definitely entertaining and the story line, albeit lackluster, did its job. But I wasn’t satisfied with the character development. I believe that some of this book’s characters should have been researched and developed more before it was finalized. For example, in the middle of this story Scooter is painted as an attractive and upwardly mobile young man with ambitions and not-so-far off goals. On the other hand that depth disappears when the author contradicts that personality with making him out to be naïve, self-abasing and cock-starved. I ponder the idea that his homosexuality is viewed as a sexual weakness by this author since he only comes across as weak when it comes to his sexuality. And then I ponder if this was done to satisfy female readers who would be uncomfortable with the idea that a man can be masculine, gay and sure of himself at once. I may be reaching with that notion but the character of Scooter is followed by so many of the generalized stereotyped clichés that I wonder if much effort was put into its development. We have only two views of homosexuality in this book. There’s Jorge, the mentally unstable and volatile bad boy. He uses his uncompassionate sex with men as a weapon to hurt and cripple his partner in an effort to only satisfy himself or his own wants. And then there’s Scooter who seems to have more than a passing insatiable lust for painful, self-loathing and wanton sex. All of the brash homosexual interactions are countered with the pure romance of the heterosexual couple Juanita and Conan who’s sexual habits are not explored, just implied. It’s felt that when they do have sex it will be in a bed, gentle and passionate. It will entail foreplay and plenty of adoration.
There are quite a bit of excessively graphic sex scenes
in this book with uncomfortable and abrasive behavior that will
make the faint-hearted readers wince more than once. However,
there are quite a few stories going on at one time to keep the
reader entertained. At the very least it’s a great book for the
light reader and a light read for the avid reader.
A Review by Seneca
seneca@excapethematrix.com
With this guide, the 19 year old author sets out to give Black Gay youth a guide to embracing their identity and developing into proud, strong and powerful members of their communities by discussing issues that are important to Black Gay young men. In the manner of a sit-down chat with your brother, young Mr. Jones accomplishes his task quite successfully by keeping his language comprehensible to readers anywhere between the ages of 12 to 25. This approach however does not make for dumbed-down reading nor ineffective rhetoric but rather the reader will be pleased with the frank, yet jovial way in which Jones delves into discussions on topics ranging from Sex to Stereotypes.
The topic of “Coming Out” is discussed candidly while the author helps the reader list and weigh the pros and cons of the matter before making the big decision. This guide is also not without other in-depth discussions on topics such as Relationships, Church, School, Drugs, Activism, Health, History, Law and Pride. It was written for youth by youth because of a noticed lack of attention to the young Black Gay demographic as well as a lack of information to the same. With this guide, one gets the sense that a portion of that gap is now closed.
Simply put, this is a successfully written resource that no young Gay male should be without.