Carry On: A Story of Resilience, Redemption, and an Unlikely Family
Written and Narrated By: Lisa Fenn
Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
The really, really hard work after the Happily Ever After
Lisa Fenn does probably the best at translating how the impoverished manage to stay within the cycles of poverty. She's a blonde, blue-eyed woman who was raised in a world of moderate privilege (comparatively) where spunk means something, and where dreams can be paired with a little hard work, actually coming true.
Enter Dartanyon and Leroy, two black young men coming from worlds of desperate poverty, lack of parental love and support, drug and alcohol addiction, and the constant uprooting to homes of ever decreasing livability. That they both have disabilities (Dartanyon is legally blind, and Leroy is missing his legs) and are good wrestlers and greater friends, lands them in Fenn's sights as a producer of features at ESPN. They're a great story: she's very, very moved by a newspaper human interest story that has a photograph of Dartanyon carrying Leroy on his back (otherwise known as the, "He ain't heavy; he's my brother" pose). Her story of them airs on ESPN and is an instant hit. The country embraces the boys and their dedication to each other, and they back it up with donations to see the boys to college.
And that's where it all should end, right? Lisa thinks so, at any rate. She thinks her involvement with the two will be dwindling away.
Not so faaaaaast!
This is where Carry On really hits its stride and becomes a book of major import. Because the lives of the two almost instantly fall apart. They can't manage money, blowing through it with silly and major purchases, to the point where their phones, the electricity are cut off. They don't go to class, having managed to get through school with good grades, but Fenn finds out they were merely passed on out of form's sake. Leroy even gets his girlfriend pregnant, wanting to be the father he never had.
Exasperating at best, right?
It certainly is to Lisa, who has to step in time and time again all to keep the boys’ heads above water. She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. But she learns, and teaches us, so much about the mindset of the impoverished. The two young men grew up in a place where there was a paycheck a month at most, and it was gone within a day to pay for bills, pay for whatever, leaving families to spend the following 29 days struggling and living with want and lack. They come from a world where dreams aren't followed with work of any sort because, as there are no options, dreams never come true. They come from times where having kids at an early age is just par for the course, and there are no role models around for them to see what being a true parent is.
Carry On is such a struggle at times because it's hell in a hand basket most of the time, but through it all, Lisa Fenn is there, offering support and a shoulder to lean on, modeling what a true mother would be like. Though she's at her wits end at times, she never wavers in her faith and belief in them, that given time and better choices, both Dartanyon and Leroy will have their epiphanies.
That they do? Well, that just makes the book a great listen right there! It shows what being a true family is, and it's unforgettable.
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