Tayari's Blog: A Tale of Two Brothers
Posted by TayariJones on June 14, 2006 07:01 PM
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Current Events
I was listening to NPR the other day and I heard a report that I can only describe as haunting. I was moved by what I heard, that I wrote into NPR and they posted my comment on thier website and designated the story a "Driveway Moment." The story is the story of Troy and Tovan, two black boys, who were roommates in a Washington, DC group home. About ten years ago, they were interviewed and shared all their childhood dreams. Ten years later, things are different. Listen to this story. It will change you.
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There are 4 comments on "A Tale of Two Brothers". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by Patty ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.tayarijones.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
Tayari,
I was so moved by that very same story! I sat in the parking lot of my grocery store, the rain clouding the windshield, and I sobbed. I couldn't shake the sadness for days. I want to go grab all those kids in foster care and take them home. It was an incredibly moving story and I've told everyone I know about it. So, so sad.
June 14, 2006 07:36 PM
Comment #2, by Tammee
I listened on my way home from work and was also saddened. The boys sounded so hopeful when they were young. I think the saddest thing was the fact that now the remaining young man (I think it is Tovon), says that he can't remember when he lost his drive to make something of his life. I know there are a lot of succesful black men, but it seems like we're still losing an awful lot of them in this present generation.
June 15, 2006 10:14 AM
Comment #3, by Ladylee
Wow, that was something else. These two boys... they were so hopeful for the future, and they seem to be in the right environment for development. But things didn't go as I thought they would.
In recent years,I have found that I never look at anyone who has fallen on hard times and turn my nose up at them... I instead wonder to myself, what happened? What happened at some point in their lives that threw them off course, causing them to veer off from being all that they could be in life... We can only speculate and learn, as we do from these boys lives. Sad story.
June 15, 2006 12:14 PM
Comment #4, by Michael Fischer
Wow; makes me realize how lucky I am. I spent 1.5 yrs in a state group home (14-15), but was lucky enough to have two great parents with a middle-class income. A lot of my peers weren't as lucky and I often wonder what happened to them, if they made it. The home I was at has also been torn down by the state and sold to private developers who plan to use the land for condos. Many of the staff workers lost their jobs, which brings me to another aspect of this story that touched me…
…Stacey Carter. People like him are severely underpaid for the kind of work they do; when I write about my experiences in a state group home, the first thing people act surprised about is the fact that I don’t write about stereotypically abusive and negligent staff workers, probably because I’m too busy writing about the fact that on the Thanksgiving of 1993, several of the staff workers at the group home I was at cancelled or cut short Thanksgiving with their own families so they could cook Thanksgiving dinner for us, because some of us couldn’t go home, or could only go home for a few hours (we had certain restrictions), and some of us (not me, but some of my peers) had no home to go to in the first place
Thanks for sharing, T. I hope Tovon finds himself and I hope Stacey keeps doing what he’s doing.
June 16, 2006 07:47 PM