Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

“I immediately liked, of course, the combo-burger nature of his phraseology. The marriage of ‘barking up the wrong tree’ to ‘preaching to the choir.’ It works. It calls for a rethinking of our status quo, no longer satisfied with the way the world is lulled into operating and yearning for a new vision. It is on the lookout for ways to confound and deconstruct.”

In this excerpt from the opening passage of the book, Boyle is conversing with Ramon, a gang member employed at the Homeboy Industries’ bakery. As Boyle tries to counsel Ramon, Ramon says Boyle is “barking up the wrong tree” (1). Boyle makes a mental note the phrase should be used as the title of his next book, and then he parses the phrase in a way that will become a hallmark of the text. Boyle takes a misspoken idiom uttered by one of his homies, and instead of dismissing the phrase as merely uneducated or worthless—or even correcting it—Boyle redeems it and sees the value in it. Boyle looks at the mistake and gleans real insight from it. By doing so, he gently subverts authority: the authority of language and his own authority. This reveals how much he reveres his homies and finds wisdom even in their mistakes. He also reveals his humility and willingness to glean insight from unconventional packages. This linguistic maneuver bolsters the theme that everyone has worth and should not be discarded for their mistakes—indeed, those mistakes may hold untold treasures.