ustxtxb_obs_1996_06_14_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

Audre Lorde Salimah Ali Alphabetically ambitious, No Loans Today goes beyond ABC, to examine others who live and work in an area that has not recovered from the 1992 riots or the decline of the aeronautics industry. James Washington recounts the obstacles he surmounted to open King’s Original Hot Tamales Cafe. Johnnie Richardson, owner of Rite-Tune Tune Up, laments the lack of employment for locals and how difficult it is to start and sustain a business there. A body shop operator complains that the neighborhood is sixty percent Hispanic and growing. “They hire their own,” he claims and therefore concludes that: “There will never be a good job market for blacks.” No Hispanics or Koreans appear before Skyler’ s camera. She does capture two gang members leaving their spray-painted stamp on South Central. Notes Anthony Tucker: “It’s kind of hard for a young black guy who’s been in jail a few times to get a nice job.” His companion, Aaron “INvin” McCloud, declares: “Nobody won’t help nobody.” However, Wanda Hosea seems to have provided her 17-year-old son Tony with solid family support, though it did not prevent his being shot dead during gang business. “I don’t think I could have saved him,” she concedes. A mother of three, Audrey Cunningham recounts how she forced herself to overcome an addiction to crack cocaine. Stranger, look no farther for heroine. Steven G. Kellman is the Ashbel Smith Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. JUNE 14, 1996 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 21