The Buddha Book by Abraham Rodriguez

                                               
 The Buddha Book, Abraham Rodriguez, Picador USA, 2001

The Buddha Book tells the story of Puerto Rican teenagers in the South Bronx. Two best friends, Jose and Dinky, are making a mark in their high school by anonymously writing "The Buddha Book," a comic that tells the hidden secrets of the school. The story starts with Jose murdering his ex girlfriend, Lucy. Jose is obsessed with this act, writing about in his comic and seeing her ghost around. Jose plans on using the comic to not only turn himself in, but make a name for himself as well. Dinky is trying to separate himself from the history his drug dealer father gave him. He is doing his part by bringing his family back together again. He also gets involved in a romantic relationship with Anita, which also goes into "The Buddha Book." Anita is Jose's half sister who is trying to make herself famous by becoming the most notorious female serial killer of all time.

This book explores the idea of forming your own identity. All of the main characters in this book are doing their best to make a life of their own, outside of what is expected of them, whether it be good or bad. Throughout the novel, Jose and Dinky find a release through comics. Rodriguez explores how the arts help people and allow these boys to find out who they are. Jose, Dinky, and Anita all have struggles in family life as well. This focus on comics has a lot of options for creative assignments for the teacher to assign. They each need something to separate themselves from their parents and the expectations the parents have for them.  This novel spends most of its time with the males, using a third person objective narrator, primarily focusing on Jose's point of view. Male students might appreciate a voice similar to their own. 

Although this novel does a good exploration of self identity , I would not recommend it for a middle school classroom for a variety of reasons. First of all, as all of the characters are Puerto Rican, there are many times where the characters would speak Spanish for paragraphs at a time. As someone who has never studied Spanish, it isolated me from the text and I could no longer know what was happening. This could easily happen for almost all students involved. Second, there is a lot of foul language in the book, with harsh swear words occurring on almost every other page. Third, there were a few very explicit sexual scenes in the book. I felt uncomfortable reading them. Along with that, many of the females were portrayed in a hyper sexual manner; constantly wanting sex and at one point starting an orgy. There were many ideas that were so sexual I couldn't imagine a teacher trying to explain it to a classroom. Finally, it  should not be taught because of the focus on murders. Neither Jose or Anita seem to feel any pity for those around them. Anita goes out and looks for men to sleep with and then murder. If a teacher wanted to teach this, I feel many parents would complain and the book would get banned. If it were to ever be used in any type of classroom setting, I would say an upper high school's independent reading. I don't think anything lower than 11th grade can handle the mature quality of the text.