Summary Of Mona Ruiz

How well Wes Moore describes the culture of the streets, and particularly disenfranchised adolescents that resort to violence, is extraordinary considering the unbiased perspective Moore gives. Amid Moore’s book one primary theme is street culture. Particularly Moore describes the street culture in two cities, which are Baltimore and the Bronx. In Baltimore city the climate and atmosphere, of high dropout rates, high unemployment and poor public infrastructure creates a perfect trifecta for gang violence to occur. Due to what was stated above, lower income adolescent residents in Baltimore are forced to resort to crime and drugs as a scapegoat of their missed opportunities.

As much as you can wish for someone to change, sometimes it is just easier to accept others for who they are and understand that won’t ever change. In Abuela Invents The Zero, the main character, Constancia, has a hard time understanding this and frequently mentally criticises her grandmother for just being the way she is. “I have to help her the climb the steps, and she stops to take a deep breath after each one, then I lead her down the aisle so that everybody can see me with my bizarre grandmother. If I were a good Catholic, I’m sure I’d get some purgatory time taken off for my sacrifice. She is walking as slow as Captain Cousteau exploring the bottom of the sea, looking around, taking her sweet time.” In this thought from Constancia, she shows

How often are women admirable? Ellen Ochoa, An hispanic engineer, astronaut, and now a director of the Johnson Space Center, is one of the most admirable persons. Ochoa, a dream chaser who encourages others to go after what they really want. Education lead Ochoa to where she is now; However, this career she chose brighten up women making Ochoa their hero.

The gang life I can relate too. In my experience and in the music that the older homies use to influence their young recruits always explain the struggle that once you are in there is no way out. Also known as: ‘’blood in, blood out.’’ Gang banging at such a young age became natural. It was all around me. My older brother was a gang member and kept secrets from me and always had it all. He had all of the respect in the city. I wanted that respect. My stepfather at the time was abusive and my mother was always at work. I hated my life, every day was a struggle. I got involved at ten years old with the Nortenos and am still till this day, I felt as if there was no way out. I want nothing more than to get out, but it is hard. Art shows an example of how he got out of the ghetto. He was just as much involved as I was. It helps me

By the preliminary year of 1990s, the crack period that engulfed New York City in the 1980s was on the path to failure and delinquency percentages were correspondingly decreasing. But Randol Contreras noticed something special on the roads in South Bronx community where he grew up. Randol observed how his drug-distributing friends were no longer making money from retailing crack, but were revolving to mugging other dealers for a progressively deteriorating segment of the drug domain. Randol Contreras wrote the book, The Stickup Kids: Race, Drugs, Violence, and the American Dream. Randol shadowed a unit of Dominican males from streets of New York who were born at the end of the Crack Era. It’s a delicate story for Contreras who grew up watching

Julia Alvarez introduces Trujillo's vanity and obsession with examples of what he was doing while she was growing up. Julia Alvarez explains in the text how Trujillo "Vanity knew no bounds." In the text it states how, " his uniforms were trimmed with tassels and gold epaulettes and red sashes....all of this in a tropical country where men wore guayaberas."

Victor Rios’ book Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth (2017) is one in which popular issues among institutions and authorities are illustrated to express the marginalization and unsupportiveness Latino youth in the U.S. is subject to. Rios presents these institutional dilemmas in his book through the experiences and research conducted over the course of five years (from 2007 to 2012). Human Targets provides its readers with both the analytical perspective of events and personal comments from individuals. The study conducted by Victor Rios focuses on a California city and the young Latinos’ interactions with police officers, as well as within schools and detention facilities. Rios describes his observations as he shadows young gang associated Latinos, and explains the faultiness of the systems they encounter which set them up to fail. Throughout the book, Victor Rios’ examination allows the reader to see the lack of support and resources Latino youths hold which in turn, forces them to revert back to negative lifestyles.

Victor Rios, author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Youths grew up in Oakland, California. During his childhood there he had an experience that made him return to Oakland to question and study the current issues that the youth’s their face. At the age of 14 he had joined a gang, he did this mostly for protection from other gangs and threats in the area, and during his time in the gang he met another kid named “smiley,” nicknamed because of his knack to smile during every situation, good or bad. Rios would become good friends with him, and even steal a car for him to use as a home at one point when he was kicked out of his own home. Although this would eventually lead to one of his first encounters with bad police officers, as he was severely beaten for what he had done. This combined with the eventual death of “smiley” made Rios feel the need to turn his life around,

The array of neighborhoods in the center southern California holds nest to the notorious Crips and the Bloods. The documentary Crips and Bloods: Made in America starts with the generation before the blue and red covered the streets. Thorsten Sellin’s pioneering on conflict theory best describes the development of the gangs. There were two waves of cultural conflict that led up to the Bloods and Crips. The primary culture conflict derived in the 1950s, segregation defined norms that strictly separated blacks and whites. Whites created laws that extending over Blacks that created territories. Distinct boundaries were put in place that limited any migration out of these selected territories, and even activities are directed by laws. Blacks were

Vicki L. Ruiz is a Chicano/Latino studies and History professor from UC Davis whose research focused on Latina feminists from 1900-1930. She made it a point that many only focus on the chicana feminists of the 20th century or only focus on the Latino narratives revolving around U.S. history. Ruiz decided to base her research and this talk on two Latina feminists: Luisa Capetillo and Luisa Moreno.

Since I was born it was pretty much predetermined for me that I would go to Central Catholic for High School. My dad had gone there and so had my two uncles and my grandfather had been President of the Board of Directors for years. I had grown up going to Central football and basketball games and I couldn’t wait to go to school there. However, in eighth grade, my two best friends at the time and I were approached by the head varsity basketball coach at North Andover High School. I had toured the high school in my town before, but I really had no interest in going. The head coach sat us down and told us that if we were to come to North Andover High, she would guarantee us all spots on the varsity team as freshman. This was a very tempting offer

Living with people of the same nationality comforted and brought a sense of reassurance to the new life of the immigrants. The police often found themselves dealing in conflicts between different ethnic groups. “These 'dangerous classes' of New York compelled recognition” because of their vast size and possible wealth (209). The recognition turned to power, but the tenants lacked money. The tenants often looked to other, sometimes illegal, ways to earn money and provide for their families, creating ethnic gangs. In discussing these areas of gang feuds, Riis quoted from a man in Chinatown, “trust not him who trusts no one” (78). Trust diminished completely between the different gangs over the years that Riis wrote this book. The lack of trust increased violence around the

Dude Freeman, a 17 year old kid in the juvenile centre, talks about the drug dealing experience he encountered as being a ‘family-owned’ thing and described the ways in which people in the hood interacted. He said him and his brothers had a motto- “OFF”, meaning ‘only fuck with family.’(Bergmann 2008, 108). This motto shaped Dude’s interactions, really emphasising the importance of sticking with family as at the end of the day, they’re the only ones you can trust to have you back and look out for you. This was something Dude later learnt after getting snitched in to the police by a group of so-called friends for something he wasn’t fully responsible for (Bergmann 2008, 9). Dude also described the drug culture in a way that resembled a ritualistic act- “It used to be that I’d say, ‘Well, the only reason I’m doing this is to get something a whole lot better...I’m selling dope to take care of my mama.’. But that ain’t even the truth. I’m selling dope really just to be selling.” (Bergmann 2008, 110). This is ritualistic in the fact that it is seen as the necessary thing to do in the ghetto, and it appears to serve a purpose for the individuals doing it but oftentimes the reason for doing it becomes blurred as with Dude, where he’s not sure if he’s selling drugs to help out his family or just doing it for the sake of

Another popularly stigmatized issue within the Chicanx community is the issue of gang injunctions. In Ana Muniz’s book, Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries, she highlights the injustices against the Chicano community done by their fellow neighbors and the community police because their culture is often a nuisance to other residents. Muniz uses the city Cadillac-Corning as her prime example to look at the gang injunction model. She states that, “the gang injunction model is being used to police political behavior as well as “criminal deviance” done by the Chicanos of the community” (Muniz 34). The problem within the community, to the other residents, is the violent behavior and threat to themselves, so they want to implement

“It is very uncomfortable to sleep in our small home” as there has to be “four to five kids sleeping on one bed”, said the mother. The kids do not possess the opportunity of obtaining a normal lifestyle as they are kept inside their house for fear from the gangsters “It is very dangerous to raise kids, they are inside all the time”. They are not able to walk down the street or play outside with other children due to fear from both the parents and themselves. They are scared of the shooters, the mother stated “I see ten year olds carrying guns”. This is due to the lack of resources in Caracas, Venezuela which influences them to become part of a gang. They overprotect their children “so they don’t take the wrong path.” The Torrealba family describes themselves to be living “like sardines in a can”. However, they get by, they teach the children to be safe, they prepare them both mentally and physically to withstand any discomfort that can be given in the household. As the mother stated, “crime is everywhere”. The Torrealba family aspires to become greater than who they currently are and want to obtain a better life for their kids, to not live in fear of the