The Death of Jayson Porter

I learned about this book after a couple of librarians came to one of my Literacy teaching classes at my University. It really caught my attention so I decided to get the book. "The Death of Jayson Porter" was one of the better reads I had in a long time. I grabbed me at the first poem and kept me engaged throughout. I hid and read it while I was work and when I had to stop, I found the quickest way to get back to it. The heartbreak and betrayal had me hurting inside as well and just thinking about touching a rail and jumping had me scared and thinking about times when I felt down and a failure. I would recommend this to my friends and future students.

Jayson is sick of living in a run-down apartment, in the middle of his very own war zone of violence and drugs. He soon begins holding onto the rail, imagining what it would be like to simply jump off and end all of his suffering: the mom who drinks all the time and beats him, with a dad who is strung out on cocaine most of the time. Though he has his best friend Trax and eventually finds himself with a girlfriend, nothing can ever cheer Jayson up quite enough for him to believe that life is worth living. After all, as soon as things look a little brighter, another tragedy strikes Jayson's life until he simply can't take it anymore. The Death of Jayson Porter is an amazing, emotional, and sincere novel. It's the type of book you have to read for yourself to fully process and enjoy, with the use of italicizing, bold letters, and the often poetic form of writing that helps bring you in and relate to Jayson. As you read, you'll feel the thoughts and emotions of Jayson as if he was personally telling you his story. An intense read that will stay with you after you finish.

I am currently reading this book to my summer school classes and it is a bona fide hit! I read a chapter a day to them and they do not want me to put it down. They love that the voice (Jayson/first person)sounds like a true and genuine teenager. I love the fact that the story line has something or someone that each student can relate to. This book should be on every parent's teen summer read list. I would love to hear this as a book on tape!

Although the title of the book seems to give away the ending, THE DEATH OF JAYSON PORTER surges to a new life after that bleak moment. I'm not familiar with Jaime Adoff's work, but the premise of this novel caught my attention. Judging from a quick survey of the other books he's written, Adoff spends time presenting tales about urban, biracial boys trapped in harsh worlds. This book is actually bigger than that, though. Jayson Porter is a young teen who has a black father hooked on crack and a mother that spends her time with an avalanche of boyfriends and alcohol. Given the terrible neighborhood he's in, Jayson doesn't stand a chance at a decent life. His mother is a Jekyll and Hyde that loves him one moment and physically abuses him the next. Unable to depend on his mother, he works at a car lot detailing vehicles under an abusive boss that taunts him with firing him nearly every day. The bus Jayson has to take to go to work crosses gang territory and his light skin marks him as a target. He spends every day trying to gather the courage to leap from the 18th floor balcony and end it all. I don't usually go for bleak novels filled with despair, but I have to admit that Adoff kept me turning pages on this one. The prose is short and punchy, paragraphs separated by a lot of space, and headers in heavy black font throughout that beckon the eye. The narrative style (first-person) lends itself to constant introspection and allows Adoff to bring his readers up to speed regarding situations and other characters. Reading the book is almost like eating potato chips: I didn't get really engrossed in the narrative, but continuing to read was just too easy. Adoff also discloses Jayson's life in a random manner as well, going back and forth in time, and even stepping sideways to bring in additional story material. I enjoyed the book overall because Adoff definitely has a grip on his characters and the urban landscape. I've never lived in an inner city environment, or with the troubles that Jayson has, but I got a distinct taste of all of those with this book. Adoff wields his prose wickedly, constantly smashing the reader between the eyes with his vision of reality (which is all too real for a lot of people). The language in the book his harsh and from the street. The adult situations around Jayson fill his days with sex and drugs, but Adoff never portrays those things in a positive manner. They're landmines that Jayson has to constantly avoid while other people fall prey to them. Ultimately, as bleak as the tale is, there is a brief respite of redemption and hope. But the reader has to wade through an ocean of despair to get there. I recommend the book to aggressive inner city school libraries and to ones that want to show a harsher life to suburban high school readers that are interested in seeing what else is out there. The prose is written on a low reading level (RL), but the interest level (IL) is high.