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A review by emdoux
Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri
5.0
I can't believe I didn't read this book until now.
4th grade book talk
Picture a cowboy for a second. You’re probably thinking of someone in the Wild West, in the desert, with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, a lasso, a horse and saddle, and some cows. Right? What color skin do these cowboys in your head have? White, but tanned from being out in the sun, right?
Cole, the main character of this book, thinks the same way you do. All the cowboys you or he has seen on TV or in movies are white – but he learns that the word cowboy started as a black word. The original cowboys were black – not white. ‘Back in the slave days,” he learns, ‘the slave who worked in the house was called a houseboy. The slaves who worked with the cows was called cowboys.’ Make sense? Black cowboys were so good at their jobs, working cattle before and after slavery, that whites stole the name for themselves. Even today, you might not think cowboys still exist – white or black – but they do.
In Philadelphia, – and Brooklyn, too – blacks in the ghetto are trying to take back the word cowboy. In poor, bad neighborhoods in Philly and in Brooklyn, blacks like Cole’s father, Harp, keep horses. They sometimes keep them inside their houses, or in yards, or they tear down walls inside abandoned houses to create barns – but right in the inner city, in whatever kids of shelters they can build - you can find horses. Men like Cole’s dad teach kids and teens how to ride, how to care for horses and how to be a real cowboy.
The black cowboys of the inner city are a real thing on the East Coast – something I had absolutely no idea bout until I read this book. I can’t imagine horses living in my neighborhood in Chicago, or my neighbors riding horses down the street for anything other than a parade… but in some neighborhoods, it really happens as a way to reclaim African American culture and provide opportunities for young people that don’t involve joining gangs or doing drugs.
Ghetto Cowboy is about more than horses living and working in the inner city – it’s a story about a troubled boy who can’t seem to stay in school or care about the direction of his own life; about a boy whose family is in pieces and whose mother has abandoned him – and it’s a story about how a giant horse named Boo helps all those pieces come together.
4th grade book talk
Picture a cowboy for a second. You’re probably thinking of someone in the Wild West, in the desert, with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots, a lasso, a horse and saddle, and some cows. Right? What color skin do these cowboys in your head have? White, but tanned from being out in the sun, right?
Cole, the main character of this book, thinks the same way you do. All the cowboys you or he has seen on TV or in movies are white – but he learns that the word cowboy started as a black word. The original cowboys were black – not white. ‘Back in the slave days,” he learns, ‘the slave who worked in the house was called a houseboy. The slaves who worked with the cows was called cowboys.’ Make sense? Black cowboys were so good at their jobs, working cattle before and after slavery, that whites stole the name for themselves. Even today, you might not think cowboys still exist – white or black – but they do.
In Philadelphia, – and Brooklyn, too – blacks in the ghetto are trying to take back the word cowboy. In poor, bad neighborhoods in Philly and in Brooklyn, blacks like Cole’s father, Harp, keep horses. They sometimes keep them inside their houses, or in yards, or they tear down walls inside abandoned houses to create barns – but right in the inner city, in whatever kids of shelters they can build - you can find horses. Men like Cole’s dad teach kids and teens how to ride, how to care for horses and how to be a real cowboy.
The black cowboys of the inner city are a real thing on the East Coast – something I had absolutely no idea bout until I read this book. I can’t imagine horses living in my neighborhood in Chicago, or my neighbors riding horses down the street for anything other than a parade… but in some neighborhoods, it really happens as a way to reclaim African American culture and provide opportunities for young people that don’t involve joining gangs or doing drugs.
Ghetto Cowboy is about more than horses living and working in the inner city – it’s a story about a troubled boy who can’t seem to stay in school or care about the direction of his own life; about a boy whose family is in pieces and whose mother has abandoned him – and it’s a story about how a giant horse named Boo helps all those pieces come together.