Show Them You're Good: A Portrait of Boys in the City of Angels the Year Before College

Jeff Hobbs

Aug 2020 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

The acclaimed, award-winning author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace presents a “carefully observed journalistic account [that] widens our view of the modern ‘immigrant experience’” (The New York Times Book Review) as he closely follows four Los Angeles high school boys as they apply to college.

Four teenage boys are high school seniors at two very different schools within the city of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the nation with nearly 700,000 students. In this “exceptional work of investigative journalism…laced with compassion, insight, and humor” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Jeff Hobbs stunningly captures the challenges and triumphs of being a young person confronting the future—both their own and the cultures in which they live—in contemporary America.

Blending complex social issues with each individual experience, Hobbs takes us deep inside these boys’ worlds. The foursome includes Carlos, the younger son of undocumented delivery workers, who aims to follow in his older brother’s footsteps and attend an Ivy League college; Tio harbors serious ambitions to become an engineer despite a father who doesn’t believe in him; Jon, devoted member of the academic decathalon team, struggles to put distance between himself and his mother, who is suffocating him with her own expectations; and Owen, raised in a wealthy family, can’t get serious about academics but knows he must.

Including portraits of secondary characters—friends, peers, parents, teachers, and girlfriends—this “uniquely illuminating” (Booklist) masterwork of immersive journalism is destined to ignite conversations about class, race, expectations, cultural divides, and even the concept of fate. Hobbs’s portrayal of these young men is not only revelatory and relevant, but also moving, eloquent, and indelibly powerful.

Ratings and reviews

" 'We're all here because we're not all there'" With depth and focus, Jeff Hobbs looks over the shoulders and reflects the times of young men in Loss Angeles as they navigate their final year of school and open the doors beyond to the whole world. What is school to a child/young man from Compton, from Beverly Hills, from the life of a Dreamer,from a "slacker". This was a great sociology book and Hobbs did his homework. But I wished that he'd spent less time on the history of the SATs and the response of Governor Pat Brown to the collapse of the house of cards that was the California Public School System than he did. Education history is a whole different book. As observational sociology this is a great book, but there are 2 books here. I was glad to see the epilogue and now wonder what's going on with these men. 4/5

good

About the author

Jeff Hobbs is the author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was made into the 2024 film Rob Peace, releasing in August 2024. He is also the author of Show Them You’re Good and Children of the State. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.