The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Books | Biography & Autobiography / General

4.2

(114)

Jeff Hobbs

*Now a major motion picture—Rob Peace—starring Jay Will, Mary J. Blige, and Chiwetel Ejiofor* *Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, and more* The New York Times bestselling account of a young African-American man who escaped Newark, NJ, to attend Yale, but still faced the dangers of the streets when he returned is, “nuanced and shattering” (People) and “mesmeric” (The New York Times Book Review).When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert’s life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics. But it didn’t get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, trying to fit in at Yale, and at home on breaks. A compelling and honest portrait of Robert’s relationships—with his struggling mother, with his incarcerated father, with his teachers and friends—The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America: race, class, drugs, community, imprisonment, education, family, friendship, and love. It’s about the collision of two fiercely insular worlds—the ivy-covered campus of Yale University and the slums of Newark, New Jersey, and the difficulty of going from one to the other and then back again. It’s about trying to live a decent life in America. But most all this “fresh, compelling” (The Washington Post) story is about the tragic life of one singular brilliant young man. His end, a violent one, is heartbreaking and powerful and “a haunting American tragedy for our times” (Entertainment Weekly).

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More Details:

Author

Jeff Hobbs

Pages

406

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

2015-07-28

ISBN

1476731918 9781476731919

Community ReviewsSee all

"This book is now a movie on Netflix. The pressure in whichever a parent can put on a child is unreal. A main so powerful that it gets lose in the wants of what is right and what is wrong"

Pamela Baker

"As a tutor for low income, first generation college students; and the mother of a recent Yale graduate, I've witnessed students living with poverty and institutional racism crushed by the privileged expectations of an Ivy League environment. Too often, well meaning donors, mentors, and politicians assume that merely extracting a promising student from a place like Newark and exposing them to a place like Yale will automatically solve all their problems, ignoring the pull that family, friends and neighborhood ties have on all of us , no matter how undesirable our origins might be.<br/><br/>Such was the case with Robert Shawn Peace; brilliant student, devoted son to his single mother and imprisoned father, natural leader of his neighborhood "Burger Boyz" as well as with fellow students at his private Catholic school. Gifted with a spontaneous donation from an impressed alum, Rob went off to Yale, continuing the strategies that had made him successful at home: steely determination, a relentless work ethic, and a cheerful ability to apply his entrepreneurship skills and molecular biology degree to the production and sale of high class weed. Rob's natural charm and charisma endeared him to a variety of students, professors, and cafeteria workers, while enabling him to slither out of a number of tricky situations. Yet he never felt completely at ease at Yale; painfully aware of the low expectations and class distinctions that allowed white upperclass students to enjoy his drugs while disdaining him for selling them. After his death at 30 from a drug dealer's bullet, few of his fellow classmates (and customers) would contribute to his memorial fund; this was not how Yale grads were supposed to die.<br/><br/>Hobbs, one of Peace's Yale roommates and a Yale "legacy", approaches his subject with tremendous empathy and affection, yet he never quite seems to understand what his buddy was going through, or the extent of his own (unearned) privilege. His descriptions of "reverse racism"among Black Yale students is particularly tone deaf, one of many condescending petty judgements. However, the memories and observations of Peace's friends, family and colleagues are sobering; they remember a loyal, gifted and compassionate friend who drifted from job to job, relationship to relationship, never able to fix on what he wanted to do with his many talents, stubbornly pursuing dead ends and never able to move on. This was not the fault of Yale, but Yale did not seem to help, in fact his Ivy League pedigree made it harder to find paying jobs and may have made him a target. A fascinating and frustrating portrait of a young man on the road to nowhere."