Download or read book G dog and the Homeboys written by Celeste Fremon and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an updated edition of the story of the gang scene in East L.A. and Father Gregory Boyle's innovative ministry and economic development efforts in the area.
Download or read book Tattoos on the Heart written by Greg Boyle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you fight despair and learn to meet the world with a loving heart? How do you overcome shame? Stay faithful in spite of failure? No matter where people live or what their circumstances may be, everyone needs boundless, restorative love. Gorgeous and uplifting, Tattoos on the Heart amply demonstrates the impact unconditional love can have on your life. As a pastor working in a neighborhood with the highest concentration of murderous gang activity in Los Angeles, Gregory Boyle created an organization to provide jobs, job training, and encouragement so that young people could work together and learn the mutual respect that comes from collaboration. Tattoos on the Heart is a breathtaking series of parables distilled from his twenty years in the barrio. Arranged by theme and filled with sparkling humor and glowing generosity, these essays offer a stirring look at how full our lives could be if we could find the joy in loving others and in being loved unconditionally. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping at JCPenney fresh out of prison, we learn how to feel worthy of God’s love. From ten-year-old Lula we learn the importance of being known and acknowledged. From Pedro we understand the kind of patience necessary to rescue someone from the darkness. In each chapter we benefit from Boyle’s wonderful, hard-earned wisdom. Inspired by faith but applicable to anyone trying to be good, these personal, unflinching stories are full of surprising revelations and observations of the community in which Boyle works and of the many lives he has helped save. Erudite, down-to-earth, and utterly heartening, these essays about universal kinship and redemption are moving examples of the power of unconditional love in difficult times and the importance of fighting despair. With Gregory Boyle’s guidance, we can recognize our own wounds in the broken lives and daunting struggles of the men and women in these parables and learn to find joy in all of the people around us. Tattoos on the Heart reminds us that no life is less valuable than another.
Download or read book Barking to the Choir written by Gregory Boyle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a moving example of unconditional love in difficult times, Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest and New York Times bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, shares what working with gang members in Los Angeles has taught him about faith, compassion, and the enduring power of kinship. In his first book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion, Gregory Boyle introduced us to Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the world. Critics hailed that book as an “astounding literary and spiritual feat” (Publishers Weekly) that is “destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” (Los Angeles Times). Now, after the successful expansion of Homeboy Industries, Boyle returns with Barking to the Choir to reveal how compassion is transforming the lives of gang members. In a nation deeply divided and plagued by poverty and violence, Barking to the Choir offers a snapshot into the challenges and joys of life on the margins. Sergio, arrested at age nine, in a gang by age twelve, and serving time shortly thereafter, now works with the substance-abuse team at Homeboy to help others find sobriety. Jamal, abandoned by his family when he tried to attend school at age seven, gradually finds forgiveness for his schizophrenic mother. New father Cuco, who never knew his own dad, thinks of a daily adventure on which to take his four-year-old son. These former gang members uplift the soul and reveal how bright life can be when filled with unconditional love and kindness. This book is guaranteed to shake up our ideas about God and about people with a glimpse at a world defined by more compassion and fewer barriers. Gently and humorously, Barking to the Choir invites us to find kinship with one another and re-convinces us all of our own goodness.
Download or read book Father Greg and the Homeboys written by Celeste Fremon and published by Hyperion Books. This book was released on 1995-07-14 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assigned to one of the most volatile neighborhoods in embattled East Los Angeles, Father Boyle has established himself as a force for positive change in a world where death and despair are rampant. His tireless efforts have been chronicled widely in the media, including profiles on 60 Minutes, Today, and Bill Moyers' Listening to America.
Download or read book The Whole Language written by Gregory Boyle and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beloved Jesuit priest and author of the inspirational bestsellers Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir returns with a call to witness the transformative power of tenderness, rooted in his lifetime of experience counseling gang members in Los Angeles. Over the past thirty years, Gregory Boyle has transformed thousands of lives through his work as the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest and most successful gang-intervention program in the world. Now, following his acclaimed bestsellers Tattoos on the Heart, “destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality” (Los Angeles Times), and Barking to the Choir, deemed “a beautiful and important and soul-transporting book” by Elizabeth Gilbert comes The Whole Language, a book that “filled my cup with hope” (The Jesuit Review). In a community struggling to overcome systemic poverty and violence, The Whole Language shows how those at Homeboy Industries fight despair and remain generous, hopeful, and tender. When Saul was thirteen years old, he killed his abusive stepfather in self-defense; after spending twenty-three years in juvenile and adult jail, he enters the Homeboy Industries training and healing programs and embraces their mission. Declaring, “I’ve decided to grow up to be somebody I always needed as a child,” Saul shows tenderness toward the young men in his former shoes, treating them all like his sons and helping them to find their way. Before coming to Homeboy Industries, a young man named Abel was shot thirty-three times, landing him in a coma for six months followed by a year and a half recuperating in the hospital. He now travels on speaking tours with Boyle and gives guided tours around the Homeboy offices. One day a new trainee joins Abel as a shadow, and Abel recognizes him as the young man who had put him in a coma. “You give good tours,” the trainee tells Abel. They both have embarked on a path to wholeness. Boyle’s moving stories challenge our ideas about God and about people, providing a window into a world filled with fellowship, compassion, and fewer barriers. Bursting with encouragement, humor, and hope, The Whole Language invites us to treat others—and ourselves—with acceptance and tenderness.
Download or read book Skin Deep written by Steven Burton and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades now tattoos have been potent symbols of the Los Angeles gang-life scene. The black and white tattoos with recognizable gang symbols appear on members' faces, necks and all over their bodies, making their gang affiliation immediately clear to whomever crosses their path. This can mean the difference between life and death on he streets, and just as often, in prison. What does this prominently placed imagery mean for those men and women who somehow extricate themselves from gang life or are released from prison or want to separate themselves from the gang and start life anew? The very tattoos which may have helped guard against the constant threat of rival gangs now bar many ex-gang members from employment, life without harassment, and the freedom to move on from a past they have worked hard to overcome. Skin Deep is a photography project that seeks to show the effects of this ongoing gang conflict in Los Angeles. Photographer Steven Burton set out to photograph realistic portraits of former gang members who are trying to escape the revolving door of death and prison. For these men and women, the aftermath of gang life is not only carried within--it is also scrawled across their faces and bodies. Skin Deep uniquely highlights the impact tattoos have on the way a person is perceived by showing what each participant might look like without them. Utilizing before and, thanks to the advantages of Photoshop, after photographs, these men and women got a chance to see what they'd look like without the inked visual armor. After the bare images were presented to each, they were asked to talk about themselves and their families, what tattoos represent to them, and their aspirations for the future. Seeing themselves without tattoos--many for the first time in decades--naturally brought about a wide range of emotions, recollections, hopes, and dreams, with responses such as: "I am shocked. I don't know what to say about this. I am going to give this to my mom, she is going to be so happy." "I think this guy in the pictures would judge the one with tattoos right off the top." "That's crazy, that looks real crazy. Those came out cool man! I think I like it better without the tattoos." Burton met his subjects thanks to Father Greg Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries in LA, and the entire project is inspired by his tireless work to help rehabilitate these former gang members and give them all a crucial second chance in life. Skin Deep offers a chance to expose the realities these individuals face when trying to rebuild their lives and re-enter society. As importantly, for the public, the project provokes consideration regarding how society perceives and judges people with tattoos and violent pasts and seeks to garner empathy for those caught in the crosshairs of gang life as they try to change their futures.
Download or read book My Bloody Life written by Reymundo Sanchez and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking for an escape from childhood abuse, Reymundo Sanchez turned away from school and baseball to drugs, alcohol, and then sex, and was left to fend for himself before age 14. The Latin Kings, one of the largest and most notorious street gangs in America, became his refuge and his world, but its violence cost him friends, freedom, self-respect, and nearly his life. This is a raw and powerful odyssey through the ranks of the new mafia, where the only people more dangerous than rival gangs are members of your own gang, who in one breath will say they'll die for you and in the next will order your assassination.
Download or read book Home Town written by Tracy Kidder and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this splendid book, one of America's masters of nonfiction takes us home--into Hometown, U.S.A., the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, and into the extraordinary, and the ordinary, lives that people live there. As Tracy Kidder reveals how, beneath its amiable surface, a small town is a place of startling complexity, he also explores what it takes to make a modern small city a success story. Weaving together compelling stories of individual lives, delving into a rich and varied past, moving among all the levels of Northampton's social hierarchy, Kidder reveals the sheer abundance of life contained within a town's narrow boundaries. Does the kind of small town that many Americans came from, and long for, still exist? Kidder says yes, although not quite in the form we may imagine. A book about civilization in microcosm, Home Town makes us marvel afresh at the wonder of individuality, creativity, and civic order--how a disparate group of individuals can find common cause and a code of values that transforms a place into a home. And this book makes you feel you live there.
Download or read book Boyz r Us written by Scott Monk and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's a long, mad ride from Summer Bay!Chicks, babes, cars and music; bored kids and shouting mothers; fathers that suck on a bottle to put themselves to sleep; and TV sets blaring mindlessly. Race tensions are hotting up in Marrickville and the media want a gang war so badly that they nearly start one. As Mitch looks back on his time as former leader of the Tunderjets, he tells the searing story of a scene that in some ways, no matter how hard you try, you can never leave.
Download or read book The Homeboy Way written by Thomas Vozzo and published by Loyola Press. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2023 Illumination Book Awards Gold Medalist, Inspirational 2023 Independent Press Awards Distinguished Favorite, Business - Motivational 2023 Catholic Media Association Book Awards, Honorable Mention, Catholc Social Teaching Leading with heart, authenticity and purpose, Thomas Vozzo provides a clear path to a new bottom line—including 55 rules to break—bringing the Homeboy Way to life as the perfect anecdote to the massive tidal currents of social injustice and inequities. By every traditional measurement of success, Vozzo was a clear winner. In his world of billion-dollar revenues and million-dollar profits, he knew exactly what shareholders wanted and how to get it for them. Then, through a series of fateful events, Vozzo landed as CEO of Homeboy Industries, the most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the country, founded by Jesuit priest Greg Boyle. “I arrived at Homeboy at a time when I needed to learn more about myself and my life’s journey,” Vozzo writes. “And after 8 years of working with the poor, forgotten, and demonized people of our society, I’ve come to learn that I didn’t really know as much about life as I thought.” Vozzo’s enlightening journey leads to his recognition that a radical approach is needed in business and in life: “What Homeboy has taught me is that we need to do business differently . . . . We need to bust up the system, swim upstream, avoid herd mentality.” Blending personal stories of his day-to-day with Fr. Greg and the Homies along with counterintuitive business ideas that are changing lives for the better, Vozzo shows you how you can live, lead, and shake things up with toughness, determination, compassion, and grit. That’s the Homeboy Way. 100% of author royalties go to support the mission of Homeboy Industries.
Download or read book Anarchy and Community in the New American West written by Kathryn Hovey and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Madrid, New Mexico's, multiple identities and struggles for survival as a tourist attraction in the last three decades.
Download or read book Do or Die written by Leon Bing and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 1992-05-20 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do or Die is the first insider account of teenage gangs--the lives, loves, and battles of children who kill--from the only journalist ever allowed inside this closed and dangerous world. This is no West Side Story. Welcome to a world where teenagers wear colostomy bags and have scrapbooks filled with funeral invitations; where a young man, after being shot in the chest, drives himself to the hospital; where another youngster, caught in crossfire, uses his girlfriend as a human shield; where teenage gangsters are kidnapped, tortured, and held for six-figure ransoms; where kids hum the latest movie's theme music while killing people. It's a world of clickheads, sherms, bangers, ballers, and mummyheads; a world where the strongest feelings of family come from other gang members; a world where the most potent feelings of self-worth come from murder.
Download or read book The White House Boys written by Roger Dean Kiser and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hidden far from sight, deep in the thick underbrush of the North Florida woods are the ghostly graves of more than thirty unidentified bodies, some of which are thought to be children who were beaten to death at the old Florida Industrial School for Boys at Marianna. It is suspected that many more bodies will be found in the fields and swamplands surrounding the institution. Investigations into the unmarked graves have compelled many grown men to come forward and share their stories of the abuses they endured and the atrocities they witnessed in the 1950s and 1960s at the institution. The White House Boys: An American Tragedy is the true story of the horrors recalled by Roger Dean Kiser, one of the boys incarcerated at the facility in the late fifties for the crime of being a confused, unwanted, and wayward child. In a style reminiscent of the works of Mark Twain, Kiser recollects the horrifying verbal, sexual, and physical abuse he and other innocent young boys endured at the hands of their "caretakers." Questions remain unanswered and theories abound, but Roger and the other 'White House Boys' are determined to learn the truth and see justice served.
Download or read book Peace in the Hood written by Aquil Basheer and published by Hunter House. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Peace In the Hood takes readers inside the dual world of violence and intervention, evoking the reality of gangland warfare but also acknowledging the possibility of peace in these war zones. Written from the perspective of Aquil Basheer, a pioneer of the interventionist movement, it documents the lessons Basheer has learned over his 40 years of working in inner cities, and passes these lessons on to readers so they too can know what the job of peacekeeping entails"--
Download or read book The Boys in the Bunkhouse written by Dan Barry and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this Dickensian tale from America’s heartland, New York Times writer and columnist Dan Barry tells the harrowing yet uplifting story of the exploitation and abuse of a resilient group of men with intellectual disability, and the heroic efforts of those who helped them to find justice and reclaim their lives. In the tiny Iowa farm town of Atalissa, dozens of men, all with intellectual disability and all from Texas, lived in an old schoolhouse. Before dawn each morning, they were bussed to a nearby processing plant, where they eviscerated turkeys in return for food, lodging, and $65 a month. They lived in near servitude for more than thirty years, enduring increasing neglect, exploitation, and physical and emotional abuse—until state social workers, local journalists, and one tenacious labor lawyer helped these men achieve freedom. Drawing on exhaustive interviews, Dan Barry dives deeply into the lives of the men, recording their memories of suffering, loneliness and fleeting joy, as well as the undying hope they maintained despite their traumatic circumstances. Barry explores how a small Iowa town remained oblivious to the plight of these men, analyzes the many causes for such profound and chronic negligence, and lays out the impact of the men’s dramatic court case, which has spurred advocates—including President Obama—to push for just pay and improved working conditions for people living with disabilities. A luminous work of social justice, told with compassion and compelling detail, The Boys in the Bunkhouse is more than just inspired storytelling. It is a clarion call for a vigilance that ensures inclusion and dignity for all.
Download or read book Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences written by Kristin Luker and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is both a handbook for defining and completing a research project, and an astute introduction to the neglected history and changeable philosophy of modern social science.
Download or read book We Are Fighting the World written by Gary Kynoch and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1940s, a violent African criminal society known as the Marashea has operated in and around South Africa’s gold mining areas. With thousands of members involved in drug smuggling, extortion, and kidnapping, the Marashea was more influential in the day-to-day lives of many black South Africans under apartheid than were agents of the state. These gangs remain active in South Africa. In We Are Fighting the World: A History of the Marashea Gangs in South Africa, 1947–1999, Gary Kynoch points to the combination of coercive force and administrative weakness that characterized the apartheid state. As long as crime and violence were contained within black townships and did not threaten adjacent white areas, township residents were largely left to fend for themselves. The Marashea’s ability to prosper during the apartheid era and its involvement in political conflict led directly to the violent crime epidemic that today plagues South Africa. Highly readable and solidly researched, We Are Fighting the World is critical to an understanding of South African society, past and present. This pioneering study challenges previous social history research on resistance, ethnicity, urban spaces, and gender in South Africa. Kynoch’s interviews with many current and former gang members give We Are Fighting the World an energy and a realism that are unparalleled in any other published work on gang violence in southern Africa.
