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Little Brother: Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth
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About This Book
This intimate exploration of race and inequality in America tells the story of a journalist's long-time relationship with his mentee, Jorell Cleveland, through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and investigates Jorell's tragic fatal shooting. In 2005, soon after Ben Westhoff moved to St. Louis, he joined the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and was paired with Jorell Cleveland. Ben was twenty-eight, a white college grad from an affluent family. Jorell was eight, one of nine children from a poor, African American family living in nearby Ferguson. But the two instantly connected. Ben and Jorell formed a bond stronger than nearly any other in their lives. When Ben met the woman who'd become his wife, she observed that Ben and Jorell were "a package deal." They were brothers. In the summer of 2016, Jorell was shot at point blank range in broad daylight in the middle of the street, yet no one was charged in his death. Ben grappled with mourning Jorell, but also with a feeling of responsibility. As Jorell's mentor, what could he have done differently? As a journalist, he had reported on gang life, interviewed crime kingpins, and even infiltrated drug labs in China. But now, he was investigating the life and death of someone he knew personally and examining what he did and did not know about his friend. Learning the truth about Jorell and the man who killed him required Ben to uncover a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Little Brother brilliantly combines a deeply personal history with a true-crime narrative that exposes the realities of life in communities like Ferguson all around the country.
Reviews
"A heartfelt account of a life cut short, and the jarring inequities that contributed to the tragedy."
"An examination of gun violence, trauma, and the communities they indelibly mark, Little Brother is an affecting tribute to Jorell and other young Black men whose lives are cut devastatingly short."
"And that caring, like Jorell's orange soda and Little Debbies, is a form of hope."
"Oftentimes, Westhoff's gaze as a self-described 'privileged' white outsider feels, well, exactly like that—especially when he writes of the drug dealing and gunslinging...that Jorell became involved in before his death."
"Westhoff worked to find answers, and he recounts his quest in diligent yet sometimes stultifying detail ..."
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