Bang! - Sharon G. Flake

My daughter loves this book

My daughter would always give me a hard time about reading until we discovered Sharon G. Flake. Now she wants her whole collection and I will get if for her too, to encourage her excitement to read.

Bang

Terrence Clarke
"Bang"

Bang Review

The book "Bang" by Sharon G. Flake is an invigorating story to read. This book shows the struggles between man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. his environment. The main character in this book whose name is Mann shows the troubles that many African American males experience, such as a troublesome neighborhood, racism, and the hardships of being torn between being a boy and being forced to grow up.
The conflict of this book can be seen in many different ways. The book makes it out to be that Mann, the main character in this book's father drives him out in the woods and leaves him, forcing him to find his own way home. However I interpret it to be something much deeper, the actual conflict in this book is that an African - American adolescent is left alone to fend for himself in a white man's world.
This book has a lot of strong quotes. One of my favorite quotes from this book is on page 187, 5th paragraph, 1st sentence where Mann says "Boys aint men yet". This is one of my favorite quotes because it shows how Mann feels about the situation he is put in. which is his father forcing him to become a man when he hasn't finished living out his childhood. It is also one of my favorite quotes from this story because I can relate it to my life. Everyone is giving me big responsibilities like choosing my future when I am still a boy.
All in all this entire book is a exciting experience to read. It goes far into the horrors of the "ghetto" and how people from the "ghetto" look at the white man's influence not only the black neighborhoods but influence the whole nation. If you are looking for a good book with nonstop adventure while still having touching moment's that make u want to cry. Bang is the right choice for you.

Donald Goines Flashback

I read a book by Donald Goines about a raped woman and the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking "Why in the world would someone write a book like this?" As much as I love all of Flake's other books, that's the exact same thing I was thinking about this book. The book started off very interesting about how one brother deals with another brother's death, and it reminded me of a cousin which gave me good and bad memories. But then the book launched off into this twisted relationship between the living brother and his father. This book deeply disturbed me during the camping "results" and after that it just became so off-the-wall. I started questioning my donations to homeless people and who really needs it. I can't say the book was bad...it just wasn't for me...and definitely an extreme difference from the other books that I've read by Flake.

(RAW Rating: 3.5) - Guns really sound like that

Bang! Thirteen-year-old Mann can still hear the sound of the gun which killed his six-year-old brother two years ago. He and his parents still struggle with the death and with the breakdown of their family because of it. Because his brother was gunned down while playing on their front steps, Mann will only enter the house through the back door.

Believing he is too soft for a young black boy on the brink of manhood, Mann's father decides to toughen him up so he will not be a victim of the streets. Using an ancient African ritual, he abandons Mann and his best friend Kee-Lee at a campsite miles away from home, with only a cell phone and a gun. He hopes that the struggle to get home will make men of them. But his methods are different from the African custom. In Africa boys are guided into manhood, not thrown into the streets. What results are tragic occurrences and senseless violence, which ends another life. Suddenly Mann is alone and spiraling into an almost surreal existence. As he struggles to grasp control of his life, his life preserver is his gift to draw; it is his only link to sanity. Mann becomes bitter about his life and he abandons his family; he no longer needs them.

BANG! Is a meaningful story, which is filled with disturbing circumstances. Flake delivers this raw tale with the sad, yet vivid, attitude of teenagers in urban cities. At times the story was somewhat muddled and some events were a little hard to digest, but an encouraging aspect is the relationship between Mann and his father after the tragic occurrences. His father finally accepts his own misguided judgment, and fights to recapture his son. This time he wants to be a real father. BANG is Flake's fifth book and this portrayal of inner-city life is quite sobering.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

I would give the first 1/3 four stars if I could...

"The Skin I'm In" is fabulous, but I don't think this lives up to it at all. The first third of Bang! is an excellent evocation of a family and a neighborhood in decline.

After that, the book itself declines into unbelievable, author-directed silliness. Even if everything that happens to Mann after his father abandons him in the country is taken at face value, I find it impossible to believe that for a whole month no family member and no person in authority thought to look for the boy at the stable where he loved to go daily. A stable that became convienently empty just in time for him to move into it.

And to call the child Mann when the whole book is about rites of passage into manhood is just ludicrous. The final scenes of supposed redemption between Mann and his father are some of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes I have even read in fiction of any type.

The many messages of the novel are worthy, but the novel itself is quite flawed.