![]() ![]() But even if you know the broad strokes of what is going to happen, Bradburd deftly leaves multiple storylines hanging to create narrative tension. ![]() The map in the front matter of Harrington’s neighborhood where he grew up and played ball at Marshall High School will tell you plenty about killings and shootings (my recommendation is that you flip past it until you’ve finished reading the book). This review is purposely vague in plot details. Bradburd’s honesty is admirable he never fully lets himself off the hook. His doggedness on behalf of Harrington feels like penance and is essential to understanding the heart of this book. He provides thoughtful details about a host of dysfunctions-fickle healthcare insurers and feckless administrators, the contemporary gang landscape, high school sports transfer rules, to name a few-but he doesn’t spare the ethical morass that is college athletic recruiting and his past role in perpetuating a transactional system that treats athletes as disposable. But the through-line of the author, a former coach of the book’s protagonist, Shawn Harrington, trying to help that player, creates a rich opportunity to dive deeper into the societal frustrations that keep conditions in a place like Chicago’s West Side mired in hopelessness.īradburd injects himself into the story with a display of self-awareness that is refreshing and rare for college sports. All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed is a masterful and heartfelt story of a neighborhood, a school, and a basketball team caught in a web of violence. Add in the basketball overlay and again, been there, done that … successfully (including in the ground-breaking documentary Hoop Dreams, whose influence oozes all over Bradburd’s story in setting, themes, and even some casting crossovers). That story has been told many times, and quite well. Inertia and indifference are powerful factors that kill dreams.Īt the macro level, the book is about the violence in inner-city Chicago. Reading All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed in these turbulent times is to be reminded that American racism and riots don’t appear out of a vacuum. Bradburd’s book is not about police violence, though there is some of that, along with a better understanding of police relations with citizens and school officials in Chicago’s dangerous West Side neighborhoods. I was already pondering the takeaways of Bradburd’s 2018 book, which was released in paperback earlier this year, in the context of the tragic death of George Floyd by Minneapolis police that has led to a swell of protests around the United States and renewed conversations about race in our society. ![]() How fitting last week for me to sit down and write my review of Rus Bradburd’s All The Dreams We’ve Dreamed: A Story of Hoops and Handguns on Chicago’s West Side, and perk up when a woman on my local NPR station recited Langston Hughes’ heart-wrenching poem, “Let America Be America Again,” from whose words Bradburd based his title. ![]()
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