Download or read book South Central L A Life written by Sharquent Delon Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before Sharquent was old enough to drive, she turned to a life of addiction and crime. "South Central L.A. LIFE" is a frank look at Sharquent's incredible experiences at the edge of society's borders. In these unflinching pages, she describes what its like to get mixed up L.A.s darkest criminal life, where those with no future and nothing to lose will do anything for the next high. Then Sharquent stumbles upon Victory Outreach, a remarkable women's rehabilitation for women's recovery. What happened next would put Sharquent on the path towards a higher purpose in life. But not before the greatest struggle of all- the struggle to believe in herself enough to have a future.
Download or read book South Central Is Home written by Abigail Rosas and published by Stanford Studies in Comparativ. This book was released on 2019 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Central Los Angeles is often characterized as an African American community beset by poverty and economic neglect. But this depiction obscures the significant Latina/o population that has called South Central home since the 1970s. More significantly, it conceals the efforts African American and Latina/o residents have made together in shaping their community. As residents have faced increasing challenges from diminished government social services, economic disinvestment, immigration enforcement, and police surveillance, they have come together in their struggle for belonging and justice. South Central Is Home investigates the development of relational community formation and highlights how communities of color like South Central experience racism and discrimination--and how in the best of situations, they are energized to improve their conditions together. Tracking the demographic shifts in South Central from 1945 to the present, Abigail Rosas shows how financial institutions, War on Poverty programs like Headstart for school children, and community health centers emerged as crucial sites where neighbors engaged one another over what was best for their community. Through this work, Rosas illuminates the promise of community building, offering findings indispensable to our understandings of race, community, and place in U.S. society.
Download or read book South Central Dreams written by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Race, place, and identity in a changing urban America Over the last five decades, South Los Angeles has undergone a remarkable demographic transition. In South Central Dreams, eminent scholars Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Manuel Pastor follow its transformation from a historically Black neighborhood into a predominantly Latino one, providing a fresh, inside look at the fascinating—and constantly changing—relationships between these two racial and ethnic groups in California. Drawing on almost two hundred interviews and statistical data, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor explore the experiences of first- and second-generation Latino residents, their long-time Black neighbors, and local civic leaders seeking to build coalitions. Acknowledging early tensions between Black and Brown communities. they show how Latino immigrants settled into a new country and a new neighborhood, finding various ways to co-exist, cooperate, and, most recently, demonstrate Black-Brown solidarity at a time when both racial and ethnic communities have come under threat. Hondagneu-Sotelo and Pastor show how Latino and Black residents have practiced, and adapted innovative strategies of belonging in a historically Black context, ultimately crafting a new route to place-based identity and political representation. South Central Dreams illuminates how racial and ethnic demographic shifts—as well as the search for identity and belonging—are dramatically shaping American cities and neighborhoods around the country.
Download or read book Catching Hell in the City of Angels written by João Helion Costa Vargas and published by Choice Publishing Co., Ltd.. This book was released on 2006 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, Los Angeles has become the most racially and economically divided city in the United States. In the poorest parts of South Central Los Angeles, buildings in disrepair--the legacy of racial unrest. Moving beyond stereotypes of South Central's predominantly African American residents, João H. Costa Vargas recounts his almost two years living in the district. Personal, critical, and disquieting, Catching Hell in the City of Angels examines the ways in which economic and social changes in the twentieth century have affected the black community, and powerfully conveys the experiences that bind and divide its people. Through compelling stories of South Central, including his own experience as an immigrant of color, Vargas presents portraits of four groups. He talks daily with women living in a low-income Watts apartment building; works with activists in a community organization against police brutality; interacts with former gang members trying to maintain a 1992 truce between the Bloods and the Crips; and listens to amateur jazz musicians who perform in a gentrified section of the neighborhood. In each case he describes the worldviews and the definitions of "blackness" these people use to cope with oppression. Vargas finds, in turn, that blackness is a form of racial solidarity, a vehicle for the renewal of African American culture, and a political expression of revolutionary black nationalism. Vargas reveals that the social fault lines in South Central reflect both contemporary disparities and long-term struggles. In doing so, he shows both the racialized power that makes "blackness" a prized term of identity and the terrible price that African Americans have paid for this emphasis. Ultimately, Catching Hell in the City of Angels tells the story of urban America through the lives of individuals from diverse, overlapping, and vibrant communities. João H. Costa Vargas is assistant professor in the Center for African and African American Studies and the department of anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Robin D. G. Kelley is the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books, including Yo Mama's Disfunktional: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.
Download or read book Blowin Up written by Jooyoung Lee and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What many readers have wished for is now reality: a richly descriptive ethnography of street rappers. Blowing up refers to rappers dream of becoming rich and famous, or, at the least, successful as recording artists. Jooyoung Lee adds a shape to his story of Flawliis, VerBS, E. Crimsin, Psychosiz, and Tick-a-Lott: how do young black men from the inner city navigate their twenties? Blowin Up is a vibrant look at the young-adult stage of people who grow up in the shadow of gangs, dead-end jobs, and a glittering entertainment industry (the setting is Los Angeles). No other account of ghetto youth affords us this particular angle of vision. Lee discovers that in South Central L.A., rap can create bridges that bring young men together with peers from different neighborhoods (underscoring the importance of a healthy alternative to gangs). A rapper s underground artistic career is rooted in battle skills and crowd appeal, and, to boot, is meritocratic (whereas mainstream career success is based on branding, timing, funding, networks, and gimmicks). Rapping is an embodied artit takes much practice to learn, and requires body skills in dance, stance, and voice. Lee homes in on the skills and personalities of individual rappers, but he also illuminates the complex hip-hop scene around which these young men orbit, giving us detailed understandings of how young men navigate the intricate, tightly-wound world of tragedy and opportunity in the city. Lee balances the prospect of risk and existential uncertainty for youth entering a young adult life-stage with the hope for a big break in forging an entertainment career. In the end, Lee shows us how the arts can shape the lives of at-risk youth."
Download or read book Ice written by Ice-T and published by One World. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He’s a hip-hop icon credited with single-handedly creating gangsta rap. Television viewers know him as Detective Odafin “Fin” Tutuola on the top-rated drama Law & Order: SVU. But where the hype and the headlines end, the real story of Ice-T—the one few of his millions of fans have ever heard—truly begins. Ice is Ice-T in his own words—raw, uncensored, and unafraid to speak his mind. About his orphan upbringing on the gang-infested streets of South Central, his four-year stint in the U.S. Army, his successful career as a hustler and thief, and his fateful decision to turn away from a life of crime and forge his own path to international stardom. Along the way, Ice shares never-before-told stories about friends such as Tupac, Dick Wolf, Chris Rock, and Flavor Flav, among others. And he offers up candid observations on marriage and monogamy, the current state of hip-hop, and his latest passion: mentoring at-risk youths around the country. With insights into the cutthroat world of the street—and the cutthroat world of Hollywood—Ice is the unforgettable story of a true American original.
Download or read book One Time The Story of a South Central Los Angeles Police Officer written by Brian S. Bentley and published by Cool Jack Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-09 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hardcore look into the mind of a patrol officer working in South Central Los Angeles. The author uses personal testimony to illustrate how "Da Hood" changed him from a "community base" police officer into an aggressive predator of gang members. The LAPD recruitment posters forgot to mention that he would be shot at, called an "Uncle Tom," and treated like an outsiders by his partners because he grew up and lived in the neighborhood he patrolled. The employment pamphlets failed to describe the helplessness he would feel while handling rape investigations or the sadness he would have to block out at homicide scenes. Nothing prepared him for what he would experience. His Bachelors degree did not prepare him for a career with the LAPD. Growing up with gang members did not prepare him for the streets as a cop. The only adequate preparation he had was his religious beliefs. He was prepared to die.
Download or read book Five Days at Memorial written by Sheri Fink and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The award-winning book that inspired an Apple Original series from Apple TV+ • A landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina—and the suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning physician and reporter “An amazing tale, as inexorable as a Greek tragedy and as gripping as a whodunit.”—Dallas Morning News After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting by Pulitzer Prize winner Sheri Fink, unspools the mystery, bringing us inside a hospital fighting for its life and into the most charged questions in health care: which patients should be prioritized, and can health care professionals ever be excused for hastening death? Transforming our understanding of human nature in crisis, Five Days at Memorial exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals how ill-prepared we are for large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star WINNER: National Book Critics Circle Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Ridenhour Book Prize, American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award, National Association of Science Writers Science in Society Award
Download or read book Black Los Angeles written by Darnell M. Hunt and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Naráyana’s best-seller gives its reader much more than “Friendly Advice.” In one handy collection—closely related to the world-famous Pañcatantra or Five Discourses on Worldly Wisdom —numerous animal fables are interwoven with human stories, all designed to instruct wayward princes. Tales of canny procuresses compete with those of cunning crows and tigers. An intrusive ass is simply thrashed by his master, but the meddlesome monkey ends up with his testicles crushed. One prince manages to enjoy himself with a merchant’s wife with her husband’s consent, while another is kicked out of paradise by a painted image. This volume also contains the compact version of King Víkrama’s Adventures, thirty-two popular tales about a generous emperor, told by thirty-two statuettes adorning his lion-throne. Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org
Download or read book Girlz n the Hood written by Mary Hill-Wagner and published by Pact Press. This book was released on 2021-09-25 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Girlz in the Hood is the unsentimental, moving, and surprisingly humorous account of a girl and her ten siblings who grew up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Mary's mother was a fierce matriarch, a single mom who raised eleven children with the help of welfare checks and a fire arm hidden in her bra. Drugs, guns, and pregnancies were everyday occurrences, but Mary and her siblings took it all in stride, spying on the grown-ups, playing in the streets, and helping to take care of the new babies when they were born. The dubious yet colorful cast of characters that came into their lives (the Jehovah Witnesses, the whores, the addicts, the "fathers"), and the never-ending series of hardships (the jail terms, the knife fights, the mental illness, and homicides), couldn't shake the core of the family. This is the story of Mary, but, even more so, it's the story of her mother, a uniquely strong and extraordinary woman who was able to survive moments of pain and disappointment by laughing at the comedy of human missteps, miscalculations, and downright stupidity. This is also a story about race and of poverty and how, over time, it can wear you down and destroy you, because, although Mary got out okay, her sisters and brothers were not so lucky.
Download or read book Morgan Boy written by Noah Humphrey and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Morgan Boy is a memoir of Noah's time in South Central, LA. Dealing with racism, gentrification, and other social issues, this manuscript combines the collective experiences and thoughts of a boy looking for inner healing within an environment that many don't make it out of. Morgan Boy is not only a testimony but a resolution to create a place where Noah can rest within his own healing.
Download or read book To Live and Defy in LA written by Felicia Angeja Viator and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis. How is it that gangsta rap—so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as “over the top”—was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land. But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world. She takes readers into South Central, Compton, Long Beach, and Watts two decades after the long hot summer of 1965. This was the world of crack cocaine, street gangs, and Daryl Gates, and it was the environment in which rappers such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E came of age. By the end of the 1980s, these self-styled “ghetto reporters” had fought their way onto the nation’s radio and TV stations and thus into America’s consciousness, mocking law-and-order crusaders, exposing police brutality, outraging both feminists and traditionalists with their often retrograde treatment of sex and gender, and demanding that America confront an urban crisis too often ignored.
Download or read book Cuz written by Danielle Allen and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Unbearably moving' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The story of a young man's coming of age, a tender tribute to a life lost, and a devastating analysis of a broken system. Aged 15 and living in LA, Michael Allen was arrested for a botched carjacking. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to thirteen years behind bars. After growing up in prison Michael was then released aged 26, only to be murdered three years later. In this deeply personal yet clear-eyed memoir, Danielle Allen reconstructs her cousin's life to try and understand how this tragedy came to pass. We get to know Michael himself through the eyes of a devoted relative, moving from his first steps to his first love through to the day of his arrest, his coming of age in prison, and his attempts to make up for lost time after his release. We learn what it's like to grow up in a city carved up by invisible gang borders; and we learn how a generation has been lost. With honesty and insight, Cuz circles around its subject, exposing it from all angles to reveal the shocking reality of a broken system. The result is a devastatingly powerful yet reasoned tribute to a life lost too soon. 'The book pleads with us to find the moral imagination to break the American pattern of racial abuse. Allen's ambitious, breathtaking book challenges the moral composition of the world it inhabits by telling all who listen: I loved my cousin and he loved me, and I know he'd be alive if you loved him, too' Kiese Laymon
Download or read book Work s Intimacy written by Melissa Gregg and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment. Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways. This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.
Download or read book The Grim Sleeper written by Christine Pelisek and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the best true crime books of all time.” —Time As seen on Investigation Discovery’s The Grim Sleeper: Mind of a Monster The inside story of one of the notorious and elusive serial killer who stalked the vulnerable, the young, and the ignored in 1980s Los Angeles—and then returned decades later to kill again The Grim Sleeper was one of the most brutal serial killers in California history, preying on the women of South Central for decades. No one knows this story better than Christine Pelisek, the reporter who followed it for more than ten years. Based on extensive interviews, reportage, and information never released to the public, The Grim Sleeper captures the long, bumpy road to justice in one of the most startling true crime stories of our generation from his violent first crime while serving in the US Army to his inevitable death in prison.
Download or read book Media Life written by Mark Deuze and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-23 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research consistently shows how through the years more of our time gets spent using media, how multitasking our media has become a regular feature of everyday life, and that consuming media for most people increasingly takes place alongside producing media. Media Life is a primer on how we may think of our lives as lived in rather than with media. The book uses the way media function today as a prism to understand key issues in contemporary society, where reality is open source, identities are - like websites - always under construction, and where private life is lived in public forever more. Ultimately, media are to us as water is to fish. The question is: how can we live a good life in media like fish in water? Media Life offers a compass for the way ahead.
Download or read book Believing in South Central written by Pamela J. Prickett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The area of Los Angeles known as South Central is often overshadowed by dismal stereotypes, problematic racial stigmas, and its status as the home to some of the city’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods. Amid South Central’s shifting demographics and its struggles with poverty, sociologist Pamela J. Prickett takes a closer look, focusing on the members of an African American Muslim community and exploring how they help each other combat poverty, job scarcity, violence, and racial injustice. Prickett’s engaging ethnography relates how believers in this longstanding religious community see Islam as a way of life, a comprehensive blueprint for individual and collective action, guiding how to interact with others, conduct business, strive for progress, and cultivate faith. Prickett offers deep insights into the day-to-day lived religion of the Muslims who call this community home, showing how the mosque provides a system of social support and how believers deepen their spiritual practice not in spite of, but through, conditions of poverty. Prickett breaks past the stigmas of urban poverty, revealing a complex and vibrant community by telling the stories of longstanding residents of South Central—like Sister Ava, who offers food to the local unhoused people and finds the sacred in her extensive DVD collection. In addition to her portraits of everyday life among Muslims in South Central, Prickett also provides vivid and accessible descriptions of Ramadan and histories of the mosque, situates this community within the larger story of the Nation of Islam, explores gender issues, and unpacks the interaction between African American Muslims and South Asian and Arab American Muslims, revealing both the global and local significance of this religious tradition.
