Show Them You're Good
A Portrait of Boys in the City of Angels the Year Before College
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
The acclaimed, award-winning author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace presents a “carefully observed journalistic account [that] widens our view of the modern ‘immigrant experience’” (The New York Times Book Review) as he closely follows four Los Angeles high school boys as they apply to college.
Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. In this “exceptional work of investigative journalism…laced with compassion, insight, and humor” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Jeff Hobbs stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future—both their own and the cultures in which they live—in contemporary America.
Blending complex social issues with each individual experience, Hobbs takes us deep inside these boys’ worlds. The foursome includes Carlos, the younger son of undocumented delivery workers, who aims to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and attend an Ivy League college; Tio harbors serious ambitions to become an engineer despite a father who doesn’t believe in him; Jon, devoted member of the academic decathalon team, struggles to put distance between himself and his mother, who is suffocating him with her own expectations; and Owen, raised in a wealthy family, can’t get serious about academics but knows he must.
Including portraits of secondary characters—friends, peers, parents, teachers, and girlfriends—this “uniquely illuminating” (Booklist) masterwork of immersive journalism is destined to ignite conversations about class, race, expectations, cultural divides, and even the concept of fate. Hobbs’s portrayal of these young men is not only revelatory and relevant, but also moving, eloquent, and indelibly powerful.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
High school is an unforgettable experience—just ask journalist Jeff Hobbs. He spent hundreds of hours with four boys from different Los Angeles neighborhoods during their senior year of 2016–17, letting them tell their poignant and compelling stories about the thrills and challenges of making decisions that could shape the rest of their lives. As these young men navigate the sometimes brutal road to college, Show Them You’re Good draws us into their fears and dreams, inspiring deep empathy. We were touched when Sam, already overextended and burdened by his mother’s high expectations, reaches out to help a depressed classmate. And we celebrated with Carlos, who started elementary school speaking no English and went on to become a role model of academic excellence. You’ll find yourself pulling for each of the boys as they await test scores, fill out piles of admission forms, and endure the roller coaster of acceptance and rejection with growing maturity. This is a poignant, emotional, and at times hilarious reminder of how unceasingly intense adolescence and young adulthood can be.
