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"What a Man Do": Coe Booth and the Genesis of Tyrell

ALAN Review, Winter 2007 by Blasingame, James Jr

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I get lots of emails from boys on my MySpace site. I got one, for example, from a fifteen-year-old boy who said Tyrell was the first book he's ever read. They email me to say that they don't like to read or that they start books but never finish them. And they are writing to tell me that they finished Tyrell. They always tell how long it took, like "I finished this in three days!"

Kids write me, too, who live lives that are nothing like Tyrell's, who also like the book. About the only question they have in common is will there be a part two, and then they tell me the issues they want resolved in the sequel: What will happen to Jasmine, When will Tyrell's father get out, all the things they want me to address.

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Coe's autobiography is available on her website. She tells the reader that she is a true native of New York City, and grew up in a working class neighborhood of mostly immigrants (like her mother, who is from Guyana) in the Bronx. She led the happy, normal childhood of an urban child: "dancing school [. . . piano lessons [. . .] jumping double Dutch and riding my bike up and down the block with my friends. Parking lots were our playgrounds and fire hydrants were our sprinklers on hot, sticky summer days. It was great! (Booth 1)

She also explains that she has been a novelist since second grade although her masterpieces were sometimes confiscated by unappreciative teachers. By the time she was in middle school, however, she was well-known as a writer among her peers, and just as the manuscript for Tyrell would eventually be critiqued by her peers, her fellow middle school students enjoyed reading her "novels-in-progress" and begged her to keep writing (Booth 1).

And, thank goodness, she has!! Her second book, KENDRA is now in progress.

Works Cited

Booth, Coe. Personal Interview. 19 November 2006.

Booth, Coe. 2006. Biography. Coe Booth. Retrieved December 20, 2006, from

Booth, Coe. Tyrell. New York: PUSH/Scholastic, Inc., 2006.

O'Neill, John V. (2002). "Private Agency Turnover High." National Association of Social Workers News. Retrieved November 24, 2006, from .

James Blasingame is an associate professor of English at Arizona State University.

"What a Man Do": Coe Booth and the Genesis of Tyrell

ALAN Review, Winter 2007 by Blasingame, James Jr

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