To understand the artist all the reader has to do is listening to the voice behind the work. But to understand Jonathan’s particular voice, one only needs to find the truth resting beneath the art. Growing up in the South Bronx, the challenge of finding interesting conflicts was only a few blocks away, but placing that conflict on paper was a longer road Jonathan was willing to thread.
But, as all things, life’s many roads eventually diverged and the themes, emotions and ideas focused in to form his first graphic novel. “Street Journal” was born!
This book is the story of one young man’s fight to change an already turbulent life! Locked in the brutal world of drugs and violence, we are introduced to our two characters in his six book story arch.
The lead character, Tyreke Miles is an eighteen year old kid who, having virtually no other family of his own,
(other than his mother Sonia, a woman at the center of an abusive relationship), his 2 year old daughter, Melody, and Trish, (the mother of his child), he finds solace in, and leans on his closest family member, his cousin, “Fernando "Fuzz" Cortez , a 21 year plunged deep into the drug game. Still, there is a moral code to Fuzz! Tyreke, in truth, is all Fuzz feels he has, truly has, and hence, will protect him at all cost, even if he has to give his life to do it!
As startling as their two lives are, in this tale, Jonathan hopes to show that no character is beyond redemption. In the end, we are all trying to find our way through. Yes, the truth of the inner city is that the shrew could turn at any point, and that the same choices that traps you are the same choices that can free you. As an story-teller, much like his characters, he is constantly in search of truth, constantly growing and learning about the world around him. In that, lies that piece of the world he creates, a world which cries out to the masses that, he hopes, will be look upon with sincerity and love.
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