Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.latimes.misc From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: NONFICTION Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 07:02:32 EST Message-ID: HEADLINE: NONFICTION Publication Date: Sunday November 8, 1992 BYLINE: MICHAEL HARRIS THE DIARY OF LATOYA HUNTER by Latoya Hunter (Crown: $16; 128 pp.) During her first year of junior high school in the Bronx, 12-year-old Latoya Hunter hears gunshots across the street on the night a neighbor is murdered. Her brother gets married. Her unmarried sister has a baby. Latoya suffers through her first crush on a boy, makes the honor roll and takes a disappointing trip to her native Jamaica. She struggles with her mother over her growing desire for independence. "I like guys," she admits. "There, I said it." And, like 12-year-olds the world over, she complains: "Parents just don't understand." This book needs an introduction. Apparently the publishers approached Latoya in advance to write it. How and why was she selected? Was her diary edited and, if so, how much? Just as objects of scientific inquiry are changed merely by being looked at, what Latoya wrote surely was changed by her knowing that the public would read it. Beyond all these doubts, though, she's a bright and sensitive girl and a born writer, alive to political and religious issues as well as to rap music and diets, already shedding the typical teen-ager in favor of the individual sensibility she will become. Let's hope we hear from her again. This article is copyright 1992 The Los Angeles Times Home Edition. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM