Blackbird

Blackbird

by Larry Duplechan

I’m in the reading groove for RA Favorite books – four books in four days!  Just finished Blackbird by Larry Duplechan, the coming-of-age story of a seventeen-year-old African American boy growing up in the Los Angeles area and how he comes to terms with his sexual orientation.  This book, in many ways, falls into the “Jodi Picoult” type of book, capturing a wide range of issues in a single story.   Johnnie Ray Rousseau, an aspiring actor/singer, gets rejected from the lead of his senior year play because of his race, but this rejection sets him on a path to discover something else. He finds his first homosexual love encounter, which gives him the confidence to tell his parents that he is gay.  This is a quintessential 1980’s story, featuring dated beliefs surrounding homosexuality.  It was lauded at the time as a book that helped break barriers on young gay men’s identity issues.  This high school drama includes: religious zealots in the community, a teenage pregnancy, suicide, a father beating his son when he finds he is in bed with another male, dual personality disorder, and older male seduction of our lead character.  At times I felt it was pretty raw and attempted to be a gay version of the Holden Caulfield story.  It shows the stark contrast between the view of homosexuality in that decade compared to how it is seen today.  This might read well for younger teenagers from more remote locations of our states.  There were some pretty stereotypical “gay” references that the story could have done without.  It was ok, but it may have resonated better with a reader from that time period.