Asphalt tribe
"Asphalt Tribe - Children of the Street" (English original title Can't Get There from Here ) is a novel by the American writer Morton Rhue (Todd Strasser), which describes the life of a group of homeless youth in New York . The first-person narrator is a fifteen year old girl named Jesse, named Maybe .
Data
The English-language original edition of the book was published under the title “Can't Get There from Here”, the German first edition was published in 2004 by Ravensburger- Verlag (Morton Rhue: Asphalt Tribe. Children of the street. Ravensburger Taschenbuch 2005, 220 pages with an afterword by Markus Seidel (street children aid organization Off-Road-Kids), translation by Stefani Kampmann, ISBN 9783473582129 ). The novel can be read in literature classes in several countries. On May 24, 2007 it was premiered as a project of the Theater Youth Club at the Meininger Theater under the direction of Ulrike Lenz. The book is also available in an audio version from 2010 on three CDs ( ISBN 978-3-8337-2625-5 ).
action
In the novel, Maybe tells about herself and her friends who live on the streets of New York and call themselves 'Asphalt Tribe'. Almost all of them have run away from home or been rejected after abuse by their parents or stepparents. She tells of the constant search for a place to stay and for food, of the fear of psychopaths who kill the homeless for fun, of encounters with unscrupulous pimps, the police and youth social workers.
In a library where she just wanted to wash herself, Maybe meets the local employee Anthony, who becomes a great hope for her. He gives her food and clothes and tries to help her out of homelessness . However, she and the other members of the group largely reject offers from youth welfare organizations. For example, Maybe and Tears are often offered a place to sleep by a youth home, but after one night they return to the street because, in their opinion, the facility dictates too many rules for them.
As the action progresses, Maybe has to watch the clique gradually break up : Country Club dies of alcohol poisoning , Rainbow commits suicide and 2Moro is strangled. Maggot goes back to his parents, OG and Jewel, two members of the Asphalt Tribe, are admitted to a hospital. Tears, 12, is brought to live with her grandparents. At the end of the novel, only Maybe remains.
Characters
- Maybe (real name Jesse ): protagonist; 15. She grew up with her mother at a traveling circus. Her alcoholic mother had abused her and eventually disowned her because there was no money for her, her four younger siblings and the alcohol. Maybe has lived on the street ever since. She has pigmentation disorder ( vitiligo ) and white spots all over her body. Her name Maybe comes from the fact that her favorite phrase is "may be" and she often answers questions like this (maybe she'll still be alive tomorrow, maybe I'll die today, maybe I won't get anything to eat today ...) .
- Rainbow (real name Mary Ellen Golding ): 16; is a drug addict, has blonde hair, comes from North Miami Beach. Rainbow was taken away from her mother for matching her up for drugs. She has lived on the streets since she was 15. She is obsessive-compulsive and depressed , cuts herself and finally, the police suspect, commits suicide . Works as a prostitute. Her nickname refers to her beauty, for Maybe she is the most beautiful girl in the world. Maybe (Jesse) is her best friend.
- OG (real name Harrison Blanchard ): 22; lives as a "bum" on the street. He's been bitter since his country club best friend died. OG is taken to hospital seriously ill. You can no longer find out whether he will survive or whether he will go back to the streets after treatment. OG is hip-hop slang and means "original gangster" (German: original / real gangster). This abbreviation denotes someone who has lived or grew up in dire circumstances for a long time and not only pretends to do so in order to do justice to a gangster / ghetto fashion.
- Country Club (real name Alexander Mittelson ): 22; only appears as a corpse and in a flashback. He was the son of a lawyer and a law professor and suffered from attention deficit disorder ( ADD ).
- Maggot (German: Made) (real name Stuart ) brought the group "Asphalt Tribe" together and pretends to be a staunch anarchist. He pretends that his parents are dead, but is taken off the street by them. He is very selfish. He sells baking soda and aspirin as drugs to make money.
- 2Moro (tomorrow, German: Morgen ) (real name Angel Perez ): 15; is from New Jersey; was sexually abused as a child. At the age of eight she was HIV- positive and was involved in prostitution. She spends more money on cigarettes than on food. She is being strangled.
- Jewel: (German: Juwel) a transvestite ; also pursues prostitution and dreams of a life far away from the misery of the streets. He goes insane after killing 2Moro whom he loves like a sister. Lived in New Jersey.
- Tears (German: Tränen) (real name Nikki Frimer ) is 12 years old, comes from Hundred, West Virginia and ran away from home after his mother's new boyfriend moved in and abused her. She is very naive, cries a lot and needs the protection of others; she is eventually brought to her grandparents by Maybe and Anthony. She was the newest and youngest member of the Asphalt Tribe.
- Pest (aka Lightning ), a 14 month old dog bred by a dog breeder in Danbury, was bought as a Christmas present and loved dearly for a few months, but then "lost" in a park in Greenwich, Connecticut when he turned out to be not proved quite house-trained. He later showed up in New York City, where he was adopted by OG. He died of malnutrition at the age of 14 months.
Other people
- Anthony: Librarian; he has the same white speckled skin (vitiligo) as Maybe and helps Maybe and Tears. He shows Maybe that life on the street has nothing to do with freedom and helps Tears find her grandparents.
- Officer Ryan : a young policewoman who is very helpful with street children. She takes Rainbow away and tells Maybe that Rainbow has committed suicide.
- Bobby is the supervisor in the library and security person, very rough on Maybe and Rainbow.
- Officer Johnson is a police officer who works alongside Officer Ryan.
review
Pearl diver has two reviews:
- In March 2004, Cathrin Kahlweit wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung , among other things, that the novel was “not a book to shed tears”. The American author does not proclaim moral imperatives, but rather describes life as it could be. Rhue is not a politically correct author who “speculates with the goodwill of the do-gooders” .
- In 2004, the reviewer Andreas Obst wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he was bothered by this novel about a group of young people who lived on the streets in the freezing New York winter, that the author Rhue only told his story based on the glaring and striking surface stimuli.