Lawn Boy

For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work—and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew—he knows that he’s got to be the one to shake things up if he’s ever going to change his life. But how?

In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity. That’s the birthright for all Americans, isn’t it? If so, then what is Mike Muñoz’s problem? Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can’t seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it. And it’s looking really good.

Lawn Boy is an important, entertaining, and completely winning novel about social class distinctions, about overcoming cultural discrimination, and about standing up for oneself.

Trigger warnings: homophobic language, sexual content, language, drug abuse, alcohol use

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This was the strangest book I have read in a long while, but I think I liked it. Mike is just trying to figure himself out. Through the changing jobs and the people who are drifting in and out of his life, I was beginning to wonder about the choices he was making. Then I started to see him become more sure in his own decisions and understood. This isn't about the decisions I would make, but about him becoming the man he was supposed to be. I love how supportive his family is, how much his friend comes beside and supports him (even if he is a real homo-phobe a**hole). I just love teh realness of this story.

Some of my favorite quotes, these are scattered through the book - percent of the way through shown in parenthesis after the quotes, if you are interested:

  

At this point, I feel like I’m nothing more than what everybody needs me to be or whatever the situation demands of me. (3%)

That’s what kids should do, they should laugh. If there’s a better, righter sound in the whole world than the laughter of children, I don’t know what it is. (5%)

I’ve come to believe that to a large degree we are products of our environment. (10%)

No matter how deep the infection runs, family is family. The only other choice is to cut them off like rotten limbs. (31%)

the moments are fleeting, like my mom’s smile, and it’s not often we have control over them, and that just makes them all the sweeter. (39%) 

when the questions become too numerous and the considerations begin to feel a little overwhelming, you just have to look away for a minute and regather your vision for the thing, try to see it the way it originally came to you. Ask yourself, how did I arrive here? What was I trying to accomplish? (90%)

So, whoever you are, whatever your last name is, wherever you came from, whichever way you swing, whatever is standing in your way, just remember: you’re bigger than that. Like the man said: you contain multitudes. (90%)