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 I will begin by stating very clearly that I hate this book. From the first paragraph I realised how shallow and weak the story was and what a lousy author had written it, and it really pained me to see what kind of literature is celebrated in this country. For example, the story was over-used, cliché and boring. Everyone goes through trials and tribulations, some different than others, but this story about racial differences and minority empowerment pissed me off. Partially because it was just making it so obvious that the author had no idea what he was talking about and partially because I saw it as more of a 'doing a good deed by writing about this' book than a true story of achievement. I know nothing about the 'inner city' (though I've lived in DC) and have no way in my life to relate to it, but I can tell a fake when I see it, especially in this case. I've read books like Forster's Passage to India, Chinua Achebe's When Things Fall Apart, biographies of Martin Luther King and got a significantly deeper impact of minority feelings from those books. I appreciated the differences. I saw things differently because of them. So don't get me wrong, I'm not racist or anything, but the way A Hope in the Unseen was written made me feel that the whole cause was pathetic.
The author's voice was pitiful and over-sympathetic. It is more powerful to read a story that draws out a situation to you and lets you make your judgements based on personal experience and morals. However Suskind makes the characters and their look so pathetic that it was almost unbelievable the way he went on and on about it for paragraphs, sometimes even repeating himself. It actually weakens the impact and after a while, a reader just simply doesn't care anymore. Yes, we've established that living without heat sucks. Can we move on?
Can I relate to this book? No I cannot relate to this book. Not by experience, at least. I had never had to rise up from the ashes of oppressive inner-city poverty to establish myself and embellish my life story up to biographical level. But it's not like I haven't seen it before. My relatives still live at trade-for-water poverty in Romania. I've visited Mexico City's slums, worked in unsanitary orphanages and personally met political icons that truly did create the world around them from nothing. There are those stories that I hear that enlighten and fascinate me with the hardships and lessons endured. But I'm sorry, this wasn't one of them. Perhaps if I had heard it from Cedric's own lips or from someone who had experienced it, it might have been something I'd be interested in. But it's all I hear in America, from all around me, and the story is no longer unique. Maybe after being here for four months all this resounding 'no one cares about us' attitude I choke my way through day to day has simply desensitised me.
In addition to that, I was never notified of having to read this book before school began, and am rather angered that the school would take my time away from more important things to read something so shallow and useless. Since I'm a slow reader I rarely read as it is, but if I do I'm picky about what I read and try to read books that broaden my mind, offering a new perspective or some form of representation that'll affect my future thinking. As I've explained before, this book has done quite the opposite of "broaden my mind". I'm sorry, but I don't recommend giving this book to future classes of Freshmen who look to coming to university as a time of sudden enlightenment.
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