Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

Now we're on chapter three. This is zipping right along. Never let it be said I don't read every word of a book before I review it. Anyway, this one is called "Ms Virginia Jones," and she's about to ask him a question he'll think about for the rest of his life.

He's just moved to Newark. His friend Chris helped him move. Chris's car got broken into and a lot of his stuff was stolen. Welcome to Newark. He (Cory) is astonished by the brazenness of the drug-dealing:

"My home was next to a vacant building that was nicknamed 'Happy House,' a place where people of all different backgrounds would come to use drugs. The dealing didn't only disturb me, it fascinated me.

"I had seen open-air drug dealing before, but this was like nothing I'd ever encountered, and far beyond any Hollywood depiction."

The dealers are suspicious of him, but in the end decide he's no threat.

Ms Virginia Jones gives him a stirring lecture. (This book is organized around the inspiring lectures he receives.) "She whirled around, looked at me hard, and launched in."

What's the lecture about? Apparently, Booker sees too many things as problems, darkness, and despair. He doesn't see enough hope, love, or the face of God. "And she walked away."

He reflects on this for a few pages. He realizes that everyone in Newark, including the drug dealers, is his neighbor. "In major world religions, there is no commandment more fundamental than to love your neighbor as you love yourself."

(I don't mean to be pedantic, Cory, but that's actually associated with *one religion in particular.*

And it's the second-most fundamental commandment, actually--

after "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

But, okay, good enough for government work.)

Anyway, Cory realizes he's being challenged to manifest this love. He realizes he can't lead the people unless he loves the people.

He becomes Ms. Jones' protégé, her assistant, her son.

A long segment follows about the drug and gang economy of Brick Towers.

Ms. Jones' son is murdered. "Instead of hating, she loved more."

Cory tries and fails to save the life of a young man who's been shot. "I had never watched someone die before, and it was gruesome, a godawful end to a young life." He was different after the shooting, his friends said. In a fog of depression.

Another speech from an inspiring elder figure is coming, I can tell.

Yes, it's his father. His father says this generation sucks. It would be better to be born poor, black, to a single mother in a segregated town in 1936 than to be born today.

These comments didn't prove inspiring, just depressing. He reflects on weekly deaths by gunfire in Newark, hundreds in cities across the country, elders burying the young.

But Ms. Jones picks him back up. "As I broke down, she said two words to me over and over again: Stay faithful. Stay faithful. Stay faithful."

End chapter.

I hate these political autobiographies. They're all so badly written, so artless.