The Ville: Cops and Kids in Urban America. - book reviews

Black Enterprise, June, 1994 by Kenneth Meeks

Every night is hell night in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood known as Brownsville. A young man fires a sawed-off shotgun in front of a fast-food restaurant. Another youth lies sprawled on the sidewalk in a pool of blood that creates a dark halo around his head. For many urban areas, these may be the only episodes of violence in a night, but here the shooting spree has just begun.

In The Ville: Cops and Kids in Urban America, Greg Donaldson writes a descriptive narrative which examines the lives of Sharron Corley, a 17-year-old streetwise black high school student living in Brownsville, and Gary Lemite, a highly-decorated white housing police officer from suburban New York's Long Island. For nearly two years, Donaldson follows the paths of these two people--supposedly on opposite sides of the law--in a stark re-creation of life in the projects, where too often the way out is either to prison or in a body bag.

This book is an educational experience for anyone concerned about how young, urban African-American men and women struggle to forge a positive identity. It will dispel many myths about the inner city, drugs, guns, dropout rates and more. Few outsiders ever see the true nature of the conflict. But Donaldson, a New York City Technical College reading instructor, transcends his outsider status to tell a moving and illuminating story.

Readers will finish this book wondering about the Brownsvilles in their own community. These are neighborhoods where the rules of decorum and respect often differ sharply from the rest of America, places where teenagers with small dreams are more likely to stumble into large nightmares. For some young people, like Sharron Corley, living nights of hell is a lifestyle, not a choice.