Robert Peace was Jeff Hobbs' roommate for four years at Yale University. Peace had come to Yale from challenging circumstances in urban Newark, NJ--a father in prison, a mother struggling to support her family and encourage her brilliant and sensitive son's education. As the title suggests, Peace's life ended in tragedy. Although he graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and then returned home to teach at the Catholic high school he'd attended, he was murdered at the age of 30 because of his work selling drugs. Peace had succeeded in spite of the odds, yet his success alienated him from both of the worlds he inhabited, academia and the streets, leaving him code-switching in both.
When Hobbs learned of Peace's death, he realized he had never known the whole person that was Robert Peace. In an interview with his publisher, Simon & Schuster, Hobbs said, "To some degree, no matter the medium or intention, everyone writes about what conflicts them, and nothing has ever conflicted me more than the death of Rob Peace. . . . My young daughter, clued in to what I've been working on for more than half her life, asked me once: 'Why did your friend Rob Peace pass away?' I replied, 'He had a lot of bad luck, and he made a lot of bad decisions.' This answer is tailored to a child, but I think it remains the most accurate answer." A true tragedy in literature is not just a story of a lamentable event but one of a great person destined to fall because of a character flaw, a conflict with an overpowering force, or some ineluctable and frustrating combination of the two. What, in your opinion, was Robert Peace's tragic flaw? What social and cultural forces influenced his life? Consider Oswaldo Gutierrez, Rob's friend who also grew up in Newark and went to college at Yale. How were the circumstances of their lives and their responses to them similar, and how were they different? How does Gutierrez's life help you understand Peace's choices? Do you think that the professors and administrators of Yale University bear any responsibility for Peace's ultimate disconnect from the college community? What about Newark was so compelling to him that he returned to that community?
New York Times Book Review critic Anand Giridharadas notes that The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace "asks the consummate American question: Is it possible to reinvent yourself, to sculpture your own destiny? . . . That one man can contain such contradictions makes for an astonishing, tragic story. In Hobbs's hands, though, it becomes something more: an interrogation of our national creed of self-invention." Hobbs spent hundreds of hours interviewing members of both of Peace's worlds. In the interview with Simon & Schuster, Hobbs suggests that while Peace's story can stimulate social and cultural debate, his intention was to present the story of one man, as whole and complete as he could write it: "This is the story of one man’s life, a relatively anonymous man who died because he sold drugs—and that stark fact can be and has been sufficient for any given person to dismiss his story as one of potential wasted in the service of thuggery. And if that’s your reaction, you’re perfectly entitled to it. But this book is about details, it’s about empathy—about remembering that everyone does not experience each moment the same way. It’s about getting to know and understand a remarkable, flawed young man. Yes, his life touches on race and class in this country; yes, it illuminates education and entitlement and access; and yes, it speaks to the fact that living a decent life in America can be tremendously difficult. These issues are quite subjective, and they are best served to remain that way; my intent is not to make statements but simply to tell what happened." What are your feelings about the short and tragic life of Robert Peace?
We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, November 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.
There was an interesting and somewhat related opinion piece 11/2 in USA Today, "To reduce inequality, abolish the Ivy League."
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Hi Emily. Thanks for sharing this article! Equality of access is certainly an important start. I think Robert Peace's story illustrates how difficult equality of outcome can be. What do you think colleges and universities can do to help students from the so-called 99% succeed, both during and after their time at their chosen school? Can the cycle of poverty and lowered expectations be overcome by four years at school and in just one generation?
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