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Summary
Summary
In the tradition of The Other Wes Moore and Just Mercy, a searing memoir and clarion call to save our at-risk youth by a young black man who himself was a lost cause--until he landed in a rehabilitation program that saved his life and gave him purpose.
Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of fifteen the walls of the system were closing around him.
But instead of prison, St. Germain was placed in "Boys Town," a nonsecure detention facility designed for rehabilitation. Surrounded by mentors and positive male authority who enforced a system based on structure and privileges rather than intimidation and punishment, St. Germain slowly found his way, eventually getting his GED and graduating from college. Then he made the bravest decision of his life: to live, as an adult, in the projects where he had lost himself, and to work to reform the way the criminal justice system treats at-risk youth.
A Stone of Hope is more than an incredible coming-of-age story; told with a degree of candor that requires the deepest courage, it is also a rallying cry. No one is who they are going to be--or capable of being--at sixteen. St. Germain is living proof of this. He contends that we must work to build a world in which we do not give up on a swath of the next generation.
Passionate, eloquent, and timely, illustrated with photographs throughout, A Stone of Hope is an inspiring challenge for every American, and is certain to spark debate nationwide.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his first book, St. Germain, cofounder of the nonprofit group Preparing Leaders of Tomorrow, describes growing up in Brooklyn's violent Crown Heights neighborhood. St. Germain was born in Haiti but moved to the U.S. with his siblings in 2000. Writing with journalist Sternfeld (Crisis Point), he vividly describes the fear and loneliness of life in Brooklyn without his parents, the adjustment to his grandmother's cramped apartment, and, as he got older, how he negotiated the violent gangster world of the Crips and Bloods. St. Germain longed for a male role model, and concedes that his grandmother, as hard as she tried, couldn't keep him honest amid the "tight-jeaned girls and hustling corner dudes." He describes himself as follows: "From a young age, I'd been a social chameleon with a survival mentality." He began stealing, robbing, dealing drugs, and allowing "the game to suck him in like a vacuum." At age 15 he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, but instead of going to prison he was sent to a detention and rehabilitation facility, where he was mentored, educated, and learned to embrace a sense of self-worth. He soon became an advocate for at-risk children. Like Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore, St. Germain's gritty and self-reflective memoir is an excellent and informative cautionary tale. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A young African-American man's memoir of a life of crime redirected.Born poor in Haiti, St. Germain came to America with his family as a youth and, in the streets of Brooklyn, lost himself in the illegal economy that thrived on the streets. He fought and stole, "trying to process this new world and answer my own questions, all the while wearing a tight mask that showed none of this." As a self-styled "street pharmacist," he earned the nickname Buffett, because, as a helpful older friend explained, "Warren Buffett is gangsta," a model money machine among the Scarface crowd. Rather than becoming filthy rich, as that name portended, St. Germain fell into the system, winding up in Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx, "a notorious intake place for troubled teens" whose alumni included Mike Tyson and rapper Fat Joe. But there, St. Germain was given an opportunity: rather than the normal machine of turning broken youth into broken men, he was placed in the Boys Town boot camp system, which teaches values of responsibility and respect. Said a staff member, "the purpose here is to retrain your behavior," and retrain St. Germain's behavior it did. "It went against everything I'd ever known," he writes. At first, he went along with it to game the system and gain the merit points that earned privileges, but eventually he became a committed advocate of the systemand, moreover, a devotee of reading and education, guided by books of African-American history and in particular a memoir called Dreams of My Father, affording St. Germain "a kinship with this mixed-race senator with a foreign background, a funny name, and the gall to think he could change the world." An affecting and earnest testimonial to the power of a humane criminal system built on rehabilitation more than punishment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When 11-year-old Jim immigrates to the U.S. from Haiti, he expects to find a world like that in the movie Home Alone. Instead, he winds up in his grandmother's claustrophobic rat- and roach-infested apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. School isn't much better, a nightmare world of violence, but Jim is a survivor who struggles to adapt to his new environment. Nevertheless, by age 13, he's stealing and using and dealing drugs. By 15, he's incarcerated in the juvenile justice system, but, as luck would have it, he's sent to a nonsecure detention facility called Boys Town, where though it's a struggle he learns self-respect. Although the system is often castigated as failing those involved in it, Jim's case is a salutary exception, as he emerges from detention rehabilitated and determined to reenter the community, where he becomes an outspoken activist, founding Preparing Leaders of Tomorrow (PLOT), a nonprofit dedicated to mentoring at-risk youth. Though sometimes reiterative, Jim's story is visceral and unsparingly honest. Ultimately it is one of transformation and most important hope.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Part I Brooklyn, USA | |
| 1 Front-Row Seat | p. 3 |
| 2 Five Square Blocks | p. 21 |
| 3 Hustle | p. 39 |
| 4 Buffett | p. 57 |
| 5 Survival Mode | p. 75 |
| 6 T and T's | p. 87 |
| Part II The System | |
| 7 State Property | p. 103 |
| 8 Points | p. 115 |
| 9 Scars | p. 131 |
| 10 Inside Out | p. 147 |
| 11 Light | p. 165 |
| 12 Astonishing | p. 179 |
| Part III Out | |
| 13 Re-Entry | p. 197 |
| 14 Through | p. 211 |
| 15 Exposure | p. 219 |
| 16 Outward | p. 229 |
| 17 The Circle | p. 237 |
| 18 The Bridge | p. 247 |
| 19 Thousands of Kalief Browders | p. 259 |
| 20 Fences and Billboards | p. 271 |
| 21 Unfinished Products | p. 279 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 289 |
| Notes | p. 291 |
