Download or read book Real Gangstas written by Timothy R. Lauger and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street gangs are a major concern for residents in many inner-city communities. However, gangs’ secretive and, at times, delinquent tendencies limit most people’s exposure to the realities of gang life. Based on eighteen months of qualitative research on the streets of Indianapolis, Real Gangstas provides a unique and intimate look at the lives of street gang members as they negotiate a dangerous peer environment in a major midwestern city. Timothy R. Lauger interviewed and observed a mix of fifty-five gang members, former gang members, and non-gang street offenders. He spent much of his fieldwork time in the company of a particular gang, the “Down for Whatever Boyz,” who allowed him to watch and record many of their day-to-day activities and conversations. Through this extensive research, Lauger is able to understand and explain the reasons for gang membership, including a chaotic family life, poverty, and the need for violent self-assertion in order to foster the creation of a personal identity. Although the book exposes many troubling aspects of gang life, it is not a simple descriptive or a sensationalistic account of urban despair and violence. Steeped in the tradition of analytical ethnography, the study develops a central theoretical argument: combinations of street gangs within cities shape individual gang member behavior within those urban settings. Within Indianapolis, members of rival gangs interact on a routine basis within an ambiguous and unstable environment. Participants believe that many of their contemporaries claiming gang affiliations are not actually “real” gang members, but instead are imposters who gain access to the advantages of gang membership through fraud and pretense. Consequently, the ability to discern “real” gang members—or to present oneself successfully as a real gang member—is a critical part of gangland Indianapolis. Real Gangstas offers an objective and fair characterization of active gang members, successfully balancing the seemingly conflicting idea that they generally seem like normal teenagers, yet are abnormally concerned with—and too often involved in—violence. Lauger takes readers to the edge of an actual gang conflict, providing a rare and up-close look at the troubling processes that facilitate hostility and violence.

Download or read book A Gangsta s Chick 3 written by Leo Sullivan and published by Sullivan Group Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-16 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Saga Continues from critically acclaimed author, Leo Sullivan, it's the long awaited Essence Best Seller, A Gangsta's Chick 3. When self-made gangsta and millionaire , Jack Lemon, finds himself desperately to get out of Cuba, he encounters some of the most ruthless foes he's ever faced. Deeply amid the original Cuban thugs, Jack races against time to get state side and save Gina. Will he make it? Or is he finally too late. Once again, Gina finds herself in the mix of mayhem and murder. Except this time, it's a deadly plot ...... designed to bring her down.

Download or read book World Englishes on the Web written by Mirka Honkanen and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2020-08-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Englishes on the Web focuses on linguistic practices at the intersection of international migration and social media, examining the language repertoires of Nigerians living in the United States, and their negotiations of identity and authenticity on a Nigerian web forum. Based on a large corpus of informal, multilingual, interactive, online writing, this book describes how diasporic Nigerians employ African-American Vernacular English, Nigerian English, Nigerian Pidgin, and ethnic Nigerian languages in an online community of practice. The project combines corpus linguistic methods—relying on a corpus management tool custom-made for web forum data—with ethnographically-informed qualitative analyses of morphosyntactic, lexical, and orthographic features, and immigrants’ language attitudes and ideologies. It is relevant particularly for linguists and other social scientists interested in World Englishes, the sociolinguistics of globalization and computer-mediated communication, corpus linguistics, and pidgin and creole languages

Download or read book Gangsta Boos written by Latoya Jamara Jackson and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the time they were introduced as little girls, Tee-Baby and India have stuck to each other like glue while nurturing dreams of going to college and becoming lawyers. Their lives seem to be in perfect order, until they make it to high school and are introduced to Cino, the captain of the football team. When his brother, Twon, is murdered by his Mexican drug connection, Cino sets down a dark path that eventually leads the girls to meet Shawnee and La-La, Twons two female hitters. Soon, Tee-Baby and India are fully immersed in a street life fueled by drugs and murder. Although they are beautiful young women, they are gangstas in the making. After the four transform into cold-blooded, heartless murderers who will kill anyone who gets in their way, they decide to avenge Twons death by taking over all of his operations and eliminating those responsible for his murder. Now only time will tell who will live to tell about the perilous mission and who will make the ultimate sacrifice. In this urban tale of drugs, crime, love, and loss, four women must each decide whether to give up a dangerous game or live an evil, corrupt street life forever.

Download or read book Real Talk Lessons in Uncommon Sense written by Adolph Brown and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2008-11-14 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Adolph Brown has been reviewed and rated as a top-ranked educator and trainer from America's best colleges and universities. He is in the top 1% of world-class scholar teachers based on teaching performance, teaching awards, published evaluations, newspaper write-ups, and other sources. Doc's lectures are often described as that once-in-a-lifetime experience. As a Master Teacher, Doc is a gifted scholar, explainer, enthusiast, communicator ? and yes, an entertainer. His ideas have been described as intoxicating as a new love. And possibly a brief quote about the book from Reg Weaver, former President of the National Education Association. I would like you to add a brief synopsis of the book for the back cover as well. "Dr. Adolph Brown believes, as I do, that every young person can achieve. He is driven to reach out to youngsters who are falling and failing. And he is inspired to explore ways to help all children reach their full potential." Reg Weaver President National Education Association "Although I believe that there is no one "cookbook quick fix" approach to teaching our young, this one book does a great job of helping adults bring out the teacher within us all." John Hicks Ret. Superintendent, Sussex County Public Schools "I use this text to supplement my classroom lectures. The 'lightness' of the text helps my students understand that there are no pat answers or foolproof blueprints for teaching. This book is easy-to-read, engaging, enjoyable, and also contains profound knowledge." William Young Professor, Hampton University

Download or read book Original Gangstas written by Ben Westhoff and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Raw, authoritative, and unflinching ... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era." -- Kirkus, starred review A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever -- Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records, which in turn transformed Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur into superstars. Ben Westhoff explores how this group of artists shifted the balance of hip-hop from New York to Los Angeles. He shows how N.W.A.'s shocking success lead to rivalries between members, record labels, and eventually a war between East Coast and West Coast factions. In the process, hip-hop burst into mainstream America at a time of immense social change, and became the most dominant musical movement of the last thirty years. At gangsta rap's peak, two of its biggest names -- Tupac and Biggie Smalls -- were murdered, leaving the surviving artists to forge peace before the genre annihilated itself. Featuring extensive investigative reporting, interviews with the principal players, and dozens of never-before-told stories, Original Gangstas is a groundbreaking addition to the history of popular music.

Download or read book Victoria Park written by A-Jay Green and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victoria Park is an urban novel with a hip-hop flavor running right through the storyline. Taking center stage is an extended UK family – the Blakeways, the Johnsons and the Barnbrooks. Tug and C-Jay Blakeway are basketball fans who make regular trips to the USA to watch this sport. The Barnbrooks’ best friend Margo Turner is an opinionated and bigoted woman who gives no quarter, and as the dramatic events unfold, Margo’s adversary, Benson Harris, a teen boy of Caribbean heritage searching for his identity, gets embroiled in an ever more dangerous scenario. While crime and drama keep readers on the edge of their seats, this novel also depicts everyday family events which resonate so clearly with ordinary life. An industrial region in the UK is the primary setting, but there are scenes from overseas locations too. Spectator sport is a passion; both pro football (soccer) and college basketball are featured as the various family members travel far and wide to support their teams.

Download or read book Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies written by David C. Brotherton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-28 with total page 851 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Routledge International Handbook of Critical Gang Studies is rooted in the instability, inequality and liquidity of the post-industrial era. It understands the gang as a complex and contradictory phenomenon; a socio-historical agent that reflects, responds to and creates a certain structured environment in spaces which are always in flux. International in scope and drawing on a range of sociological, criminological and anthropological traditions, it looks beyond pathological, ahistorical and non-transformative approaches, and considers other important factors that produce the phenomenon, whether the historically entrenched racialized power structure and segregation in Chicago; the unconstrained state-abandoned development of favelas in Brazil; or the colonization, displacement and dependency of people in Central America. This handbook reflects and defines the new theoretical and empirical traditions of critical gang studies. It offers a variety of perspectives, including: A view of gangs that takes into consideration the global context and appearance of the "gang" in its various forms and stages of development; An appreciation of the gang as a socio-cultural formation; A race-ethnic and class analysis of the gang that problematizes domain assumptions such as the "underclass"; Gender variations of the gang phenomenon with a particular emphasis on their intersectional properties; Relations between gangs and the political economy that address the dominant mode of production and exchange; Treatments that demonstrate the historically contingent nature of gangs and their changes across time; The contradictory impact of gang repressive policies, institutions and practices as part of a broader discussion on the nature of the state in specific societies; and Critical methodologies on gangs that involve discussions of visual and textual representations and the problematics of data collection and analysis. Authoritative, multi-disciplinary and international, this book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists and anthropologists alike, particularly those engaged with critical criminology/sociology, youth crime, delinquency and global social inequality. The Handbook will also be of interest to policy makers and those in the peacebuilding field.

Download or read book Blue Heart Red Blood written by Apollo Alehc Sore and published by Page Publishing Inc. This book was released on 2020-11-15 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blue Heart, Red Blood is a poetic exposition of one man's road to finding true freedom and happiness. It's thoughtful, revolutionary, and as personal as a man can objectify. An autodidactic poet, Apollo Alehc Soré's poems are aggressive and bold and beautifully breaks what he perceives to be constricting rules of formation, rhyme schemes, and subject matter of "scholastic" poetry. This book was written for human-to-human relatability, so the author can feel less alone in the thoughts, emotions, and experiences that have shaped him into who he is today, as he feels that someone somewhere can relate. From the dregs of society, his voice and his poetry are universal and loud.

Download or read book Droppin Science written by William Eric Perkins and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rap and hip hop, the music and culture rooted in African American urban life, bloomed in the late 1970s on the streets and in the playgrounds of New York City. This critical collection serves as a historical guide to rap and hip hop from its beginnings to the evolution of its many forms and frequent controversies, including violence and misogyny. These wide-ranging essays discuss white crossover, women in rap, gangsta rap, message rap, raunch rap, Latino rap, black nationalism, and other elements of rap and hip hop culture like dance and fashion. An extensive bibliography and pictorial profiles by Ernie Pannicolli enhance this collection that brings together the foremost experts on the pop culture explosion of rap and hip hop. Author note: William Eric Perkins is a Faculty Fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois House at the University of Pennsylvania, and an Adjunct Professor of Communications at Hunter College, City University of New York.

Download or read book Gangsta Goddess written by Kelly Falley and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gangsta' Goddess is a book dedicated to the divine healing of women. Including womb awareness and healing, spiritual healing and consciousness.

Download or read book Culturcide and Non Identity across American Culture written by Daniel S. Traber and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2017-06-23 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It goes without saying that identity has long been a recurrent topic in studies of American culture. The struggle between group sameness and individual uniqueness is a common issue in understanding diversity in the United States on several levels—including how our differences have not always resulted in national celebration. Terms such as “hybridity,” “performativity,” “transnationalism,” and “border zones” are part of the current theoretical vocabulary and, for some, deploy a fresh language of possibility, one promising to undermine the conformist values of monocultural perspectives. To that end, Culturcide and Non-Identity across American Culture explores theories and practices of identity from a broad perspective to grasp how varied, diffuse, and distorted they can be, especially when that identity seems boringly familiar. The subjects range from hip-hop parodies to punk preppies to pachuco-ska, thus crossing the lines of genre, medium, and discipline to blur the borderline dividing the kinds of texts to which these theories can “legitimately” be applied.

Download or read book Roger Ebert s Movie Yearbook 2004 written by Roger Ebert and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 988 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring every review Ebert wrote from January 2001 to mid-June 2003, this treasury also includes his essays, interviews, film festival reports, and In Memoriams, along with his famous star ratings.

Download or read book Original Gangster written by Frank Lucas and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A suspenseful memoir from the real life American gangster, Frank Lucas In his own words, Frank Lucas recounts his life as the former heroin dealer and organized crime boss who ran Harlem during the late 1960s and early 1970s. From being taken under the wing of old time gangster Bumpy Johnson, through one of the most successful drug smuggling operations, to being sentenced to seventy years in prison, Original Gangster is a chilling look at the rise and fall of a modern legacy. Frank Lucas realized that in order to gain the kind of success he craved he would have to break the monopoly that the Italian mafia held in New York. So Frank cut out middlemen and began smuggling heroin into the United States directly from his source in the Golden Triangle by using coffins. Making a million dollars per day selling "Blue Magic"—what was known as the purest heroin on the street—Frank Lucas became one of the most powerful crime lords of his time, while rubbing shoulders with the elite in entertainment, politics, and crime. After his arrest, Federal Judge Sterling Johnson, the special narcotics prosecutor in New York at the time of Lucas' crimes, called Lucas and his operation "one of the most outrageous international dope-smuggling gangs ever, an innovator who got his own connections outside the U.S. and then sold the narcotics himself in the street." This powerful memoir reveals what really happened to the man whose career was dramatized in the 2007 feature film American Gangster, exposing a startling look at the world of organized crime.

Download or read book Below the Line written by Steven Jankowski and published by Down & Out Books. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In between gigs as a Hollywood movie Teamster, self-proclaimed sailing bum Mike Millek moonlights as a freelance, armed chauffeur to the stars. When Mike arrives one night to pick up his deadbeat client, rap music producer Pays Lee, at his private jet Mike finds him freshly murdered with a satchel full of cash. Mike makes the critical decision to take what is owed him before reporting anything to the police. More money than he ever expected, this turns out to be Mike’s biggest payday in his life, but not without consequences. Opening this Pandora’s box not only costs him his best friend’s life and leads him down a road of deception with his newly found love Molly, but thrusts them both into a dangerous conspiracy entrenched in the sordid underbelly of the Hollywood power elite. Praise for BELOW THE LINE: “If Michael Connolly were an ex-Hollywood agent who knew the cream of show biz and the sour milk of its lowlifes like he knows the back of his brass-knuckled hand, he might have created Mike Millek and his foot-to-the-floor dark ride, Below the Line. Set along the seams of the real movie business—as its street-savvy author Jankowski has lived and savored it—with an A-list casting call of characters so real they're scary, Mike Millek is as hardboiled as a shark in hot water and his Los Angeles is a City of Angles. So if you take your java noir with a double shot of espresso, take just one bite of Below the Line and it will reel you in…hook, line and sinker!” —Rupert Holmes, multiple Edgar and Tony-winning author, creator of the AMC-TV series Remember WENN, and author of Where the Truth Lies “Batten down the hatches for a hard-boiled storm. Below the Line is an impressive debut, a suspenseful Nautical Noir on the fringe of Hollywood’s dream factory. Taut, vivid tough-guy pulp in the tradition of John D. MacDonald and Mickey Spillane.” —John Shepphird, Shamus Award-winning author “Babes, boats and betrayal! Steve Jankowski’s thrilling debut crime novel jets through the gritty sets of Hollywood to the deadly Pacific in a riveting tale worthy of Travis McGee.” —Lawrence Maddox, author of Fast Bang Booze

Download or read book Roger Ebert s Movie Yearbook 2006 written by Roger Ebert and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2005-11 with total page 1052 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now fully updated, this annual yearbook includes every review Ebert had written from January 2007 to July 2009. It also includes interviews, essays, tributes, and all-new questions and answers from his Questions for the Movie Answer Man columns.

Download or read book A Piece of Cake written by Cupcake Brown and published by Crown. This book was released on 2006-02-28 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The heart-wrenching, uplifting tale about a woman named Cupcake “[Cupcake] Brown’s confessional . . . memoir is one you can’t easily put down. Her life is nothing short of a miracle.”—Chicago Sun-Times There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, and homelessness. Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty. And that’s when things got interesting. . . Orphaned by the death of her mother and left in the hands of a sadistic foster parent, young Cupcake Brown learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving in its frankness, this is the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take. Praise for A Piece of Cake “[Brown] reflects now with insight and honesty on her experiences. . . . An engaging account . . . of a remarkable life filled with pain and wisdom, hope and redemption.”—San Fracisco Chronicle “Dazzles you with the amazing change that is possible in one lifetime.”—Washington Post