The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Published in 1982

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Published in 1985

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.

Published in 2003, with more than a decade of research.

Alice Walker’s Interview

Margaret Atwood Interview

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Interview

Dylan Thomas (Do not go gentle into that good night)

Robert Hayden (Those Winter Sundays)

Langston Hughes (The Weary Blues)

Handmaid’s Tale series

Random Family Literary Criticism

Random Family Plot Overview

Random Family is a narrative nonfiction study of the perils of urban life by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. The book reads like a novel rather than a report, capturing reader’s attention with brutal honesty and fleshed-out characters. The result of 10 years of research and interviews.

The narrative focuses on two young Puerto Ricans, ambitious Jessica and sweet-hearted Coco, and their dramatic lives starting in the 1980’s.

The first subject of LeBlanc’s is Jessica. Jessica has her first child at the age of 16 with her boyfriend Puma. A year and a half later, she gives birth to twins fathered by Puma’s brother, Willy. It’s around this time that Jessica becomes infatuated with successful heroin dealer and minor celebrity Boy George. Boy George buys her expensive things but is abusive toward her and her children. Eventually she lands in jail for assisting him with dealing heroin. There, she begins an affair with a prison guard whom with she has another set of twins. Meanwhile, Jessica’s younger brother Cesar begins a relationship with Coco, who by her 15^th birthday has two children with Cesar. She too gets involved with other men. Coco also has a daughter with a thug named Wishman, another with

Handmaid’s Tale Plot Overview

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian and theocratic state that has replaced the United States of America. Because of dangerously low reproduction rates, Handmaids are assigned to bear children for elite couples that have trouble conceiving. Offred serves the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a former gospel singer and advocate for “traditional values.” Offred is not the narrator’s real name—Handmaid names consist of the word “of” followed by the name of the Handmaid’s Commander. Every month, when Offred is at the right point in her menstrual cycle, she must have impersonal, wordless sex with the Commander while Serena sits behind her, holding her hands. Offred’s freedom, like the freedom of all women, is completely restricted. She can leave the house only on shopping trips, the door to her room cannot be completely shut, and the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police force, watch her every public move.

As Offred tells the story of her daily life, she frequently slips into flashbacks, from which the reader can reconstruct the events leading up to the beginning of the novel. In the old world, before Gilead, Offred had an affair with Luke, a married man. He divorced his wife and married Offred, and they had a child together. Offred’s mother was a single