Imagine growing up black and living in the communities of Goulds, Perrine, and Naranja–South Florida areas mired by the stagnation of culture, flat or downward socioeconomic mobility,…
deteriorating value systems, and thought reduced to the banal realia of material consumption–simply life existing. Over the past 50 years the households, families, and individuals in these neighborhoods have made remarkable ability to live that part of the American dream based in superficiality and an obsession with the external. What lies beneath the surface of the Caddies, flat screens, label cladded sports clothes, designer this and designer that is a people in with internal problems rooted in the hopelessness of life existing. Our salvation from this condition exists in the challenges that come with survival: work, celebration, ritual, love, and perseverance.