By: BROOKE NIEMEYER
People who live in what are typically considered the ghetto neighborhoods of America, and are fighting drug addictions, are often seen as the hopeless group that should be ignored. They are seen as people who won’t ever change their ways because they are happy using and dealing drugs and choose to continue doing so.
But in the book The Corner, by Ed Burns and David Simon, this belief is challenged by the stories of members of an inner city drug world in Baltimore. These stories are told through the eyes and voices of those who know it best because they are living it—those dealing and using the drugs.
The characters in this book are undeniably not the most admirable people in the world, but they defy the stereotype that they aren’t looking to improve themselves. While their lives may be disgusting and disturbing to outsiders looking in, their emotions can be shared and felt just the same as anyone else’s can.
Most of the people in this book want a better life for themselves, which is seen when Fran, the mother of the main character DeAndre McCullough, tries repeatedly to get clean. Often times, she is desperate to escape the world she lives in. When there was a problem at a rehabilitation center and there was no room for her to stay, she emotionally breaks down.
“I can’t make it. I can’t. I can’t go back.”
After she leaves there, she says she cried “like she hasn’t cried in years.”
When Fran is clean, she values life and desperately wants to stay away from drugs. She wants this for her children as well, which she expressed to DeAndre in a letter.
“Life is beautiful and natural and you may not get another chance. … If you don’t need yourself, I need you.”
Fran does beat her drug addictions time and time again, but when she returns to her neighborhood, she eventually falls back into her old ways and begins using and dealing again.
The father, Gary, began using drugs when he and Fran divorced. He wasn’t proud of who he was. He would often expresses how emotionally draining being a user really was for him and if he could change it, this isn’t who he would be.
“I’m a drug addict. That’s what I am. Who would wish for that? Who would choose that for their life?”
This furthers the point that Burns and Simon are capturing on the corner—the drug world is not always a chosen place to be.
Because of the lives his parents lead, DeAndre McCullough basically falls victim to the world around him. He is a high school student and at the age of 15 is already a drug dealer in the neighborhood.
“And off he goes, a fifteen-year-old entrepreneur on his daily commute to the office.”
Being in this world forces DeAndre and Tyreeka to grow up faster than they should because of what they see and do on a daily basis. But at the base of it all, neither one of them has grown up at all. She is 13 and he is 15 when they start having sex and before she knew she was pregnant, they both believed that having a baby would give their lives a purpose.
“The production of a child … would guarantee some tangible evidence of a brief existence.”
To believe as young teenagers, before they are even able to drive, that the only way to give their lives meaning is to bring another life into the world is heartbreaking. As the authors show, this is not something people would choose to experience or put their children through.
While Tyreeka was giving birth to their son, DeAnte, DeAndre was high on marijuana. But the birth of his son does make him want to change.
“I got to be a father to him. I’m gonna do better for him than got done for me and I’m gunna be up there with him so he knows who I am. My child gonna know me.”
But patterns aren’t easy to break and DeAndre falls right back into the world of drugs, waiting and hoping for someone to help him break the cycle.
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