Being the fan that I am I looked forward to reading more about the first hand experiences he had and gain perspective from someone who's athletic ability I admire so much. Having grown up a skater and followed his career since it's heyday I knew the turn of events his life has taken since the 80's, having also watched the DVD "Rising Son", therefore not much in this book came as a surprise, though I still found most of it to be an entertaining read.
Hosoi is and always will be one of my all-time favorite skateboarders. The fact that strict rules and ideology proved to be the healthiest thing for an athlete who broke every boundary in his sport is a paradox that deserves more exploration in these pages. Far from projecting denial or submission, Hosoi sounds content to be a humbled and obedient man of god.
Just as the book itself is limited by the conventions of the rise-and-fall memoir, Hosoi the man appears to be limiting himself to the rise-and-fall life narrative of his fellow emergent Christian leaders. Hosoi devotes the last few chapters to his religious conversion and his ministry, an absolutist lifestyle that seems at odds with the cool and charismatic kid who feared no injury in his prime. He's a smart and reflective survivor of the War on Drugs and his opinions on it would be appreciated. Hosoi didn't serve time to avenge his hypothetical victims or to spare the public his menacing aura he went to jail to satisfy dubious political and law enforcement agendas. One weakness is that Hosoi says little about the legal system that incarcerated him - a nonviolent if troubled man who had tremendous potential to educate the public but instead wasted half a decade in jail. Showing a humility that suggests his sobriety is the real thing, he includes the damning recollections of his old drug buddies.
Hosoi talks candidly about his drug use and the disastrous effects it had on his family and career, and unlike most celebrity memoirists, he gives plenty of hideous details. Readers interested in Hosoi's addiction, his related criminal behaviors and his eventual 5-year prison term will also appreciate this book. If you toyed around on a skateboard in the Reagan era and enjoy 1980s nostalgia to a healthy, non-obsessive degree, Christian's anecdotes about skate tournaments, Tony Hawk and the "Two Coreys" era of Hollywood will be an amusing guilty pleasure. Hosoi nobly attempts to satisfy them all but the limitations of the first-person genre, namely, the sporadic input of others and the subject's selection of events to prioritize, results in a book that is wide in scope but slim in substance. As far as memoirs go, "Hosoi" has perhaps the most divergent mix of target readers out there: skaters, 1980s enthusiasts, recovering drug addicts, and new school Christians.
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