Little Brother
Love, Tragedy, and My Search for the Truth
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
This intimate exploration of race and inequality in America tells the story of a journalist’s long-time relationship with his mentee, Jorell Cleveland, through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and investigates Jorell's tragic fatal shooting.
In 2005, soon after Ben Westhoff moved to St. Louis, he joined the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and was paired with Jorell Cleveland. Ben was twenty-eight, a white college grad from an affluent family. Jorell was eight, one of nine children from a poor, African American family living in nearby Ferguson. But the two instantly connected. Ben and Jorell formed a bond stronger than nearly any other in their lives. When Ben met the woman who'd become his wife, she observed that Ben and Jorell were "a package deal." They were brothers.
In the summer of 2016, Jorell was shot at point blank range in broad daylight in the middle of the street, yet no one was charged in his death. Ben grappled with mourning Jorell, but also with a feeling of responsibility. As Jorell’s mentor, what could he have done differently? As a journalist, he had reported on gang life, interviewed crime kingpins, and even infiltrated drug labs in China. But now, he was investigating the life and death of someone he knew personally and examining what he did and did not know about his friend. Learning the truth about Jorell and the man who killed him required Ben to uncover a heartbreaking cycle of poverty, poor education, drug trafficking, and violence. Little Brother brilliantly combines a deeply personal history with a true-crime narrative that exposes the realities of life in communities like Ferguson all around the country.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The death of a young Black man begets a thought-provoking look at the "ever-turning wheel of violence" in this sincere if flawed account from journalist Westhoff (Fentanyl, Inc.). A well-off college grad, Westhoff joined the Big Brothers Big Sisters program in St. Louis in 2005 after learning how it benefited children of incarcerated parents. Notwithstanding their vastly different backgrounds, he and his "Little," Jorell Cleveland—"a tiny eight-year-old who possessed a gigawatt smile"—quickly bonded and remained close for nearly a decade. Despite his affection for Jorell, Westhoff chaffed against the realities of mentoring a child from an unstable home. "There was a part of me," he recalls "that felt a dubious responsibility to try to fix everything." But, as he reveals, his influence stopped short of saving Jorell's life when he was fatally shot in 2016 at age 19. Showcasing his investigative chops, Westhoff reconstructs Jorell's final months to untangle the "socioeconomic factors" that led to his possibly gang-related murder. Yet oftentimes, Westhoff's gaze as a self-described "privileged" white outsider feels, well, exactly like that—especially when he writes of the drug dealing and gunslinging ("two more aspects of Jorell's life that he kept from me") that Jorell became involved in before his death. Well-meaning as Westhoff's work is, it only skims the surface of a much more complicated story.
