Overview

An Ambition to Belong, second book of the Leaving Home Trilogy, is an astute and insightful psychological journey into the inner life of Jim, an adolescent who is trying to forge his own identity. Trapped in two different worlds, he belongs nowhere: at one end his Polish immigrant inner-city Catholic family and its Eastern European peasant beliefs and terrors; and at the other a late-1950s upper-class suburban Jesuit college-prep high school in suburban Detroit where he is totally unprepared to deal with that world of money and arrogance he finds there. At home, raw gut emotion; at school emotionless intellect. At home he is a member of The Royal Lancers, a street gang where his life is threatened by Donny, a psychotically deranged fellow gang member; at school, because of his dress, especially his Ford Motor Company issue black work shoes, he is perceived as a non-entity, a non-being who has little or no existence. Confronted with racism and a savage incident of anti-Semitism, Jim rises to find the strength that forms the first layer of his conscience and his conscious sense of self.

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Reviews

If you read, as I did, James Sniechowski's book Worship of Hollow Gods and liked it, you will enjoy picking up An Ambition to Belong, where the author takes us inside the next key phase in his life: becoming a teen and moving on to high school. Jimush, as his mother calls him, is still very much the loner seeking some kind of recognition of his worth, along with an identity beyond his Polish village community where the Catholic religion and its prescription for staying out of hell rule most behaviour. With 'An Ambition to Belong' to more than what his father and family embrace, he makes a feeble attempt at joining a gang. But he soon realizes that he is essentially a timid good kid whose battles with the dictates of his Catholic upbringing and his own conscience make him unsuited to gang membership. He has no better luck trying to fit into his new high school, Catholic of course. The more preaching he hears, the more he tunes out. In fact, he finds it's far more interesting to watch the rich kids nearby who drive Corvettes and wear high end clothes and shoes, none of which he can afford. He pictures maids cleaning their homes and instantly draws comparisons to his hard-working mom who does all the cooking and cleaning in their own home, accepting her fate as a poor immigrant housewife with a hard-working and sometimes simply hard husband. Like Jimush, she has unfulfilled hopes and dreams of being someone more than she is. And as James Sniechowski did in his first book of this memoir trilogy, he tells much of this story through his protagonist's mind, using dialogue only as needed, and building ever so slowly to a rather climactic finish. If readers are happy with such introspective memoirs and don't look for lots of action, they will enjoy this coming of age memoir, with its raw and honest emotion, its insights into what makes people tick, its reminders of the music and times in 1950s Detroit, and especially the realizations that Jimush makes at the end about the ridiculous prejudices that keep races and cultures apart, killing understanding and communication and fostering intolerance. Reviewed by Viga Boland for Readers' Favorite I absolutely loved it. I felt each and every character, felt like I was part of the family that Jim described and I even could relate to the anti-semitism at the end. The further paradox of attitudes of both the police and the priest brought home what people must live with especially when the prejudices are hidden behind the uniforms of the church and law enforcement. The sadness of Jim and Ma were so real that I am certain it was autobiographical. It's truly a terrific read. -- Gary Goldberg, Financial Advisor, Suffern NY ...This is the second installment of Sniechowski's (Worship of Hollow Gods, 2014) Leaving Home Trilogy, and while there is a narrative continuity between the two novels, the first needn't be read in order to enjoy its sequel. The writing is poetically philosophical and infused with moral gravity, although it occasionally flirts with lesson-driven didacticism: ...Jim's character is deeply drawn, with his emotional turmoil cleverly captured by his inner voice that sometimes encourages and sometimes tauntingly cajoles. The author is especially talented at depicting the paradoxical mix of frustration and exhilaration that marks adolescence. A thoughtful, meditative tale about the pain of youthful disillusionment. Kirkus Reviews ist and author of Growing Up Unacceptable : How Katharine Hepburn Rescued Me.

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