Bloody Finished

When I started reading My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, one of the first things I noticed was the almost complete lack of imagery or figurative language. There is no artistry in this book other than Sanchez's willingness to plow forward with his story and tell it in as straightforward a manner as he can. It is unfair to compare this book with, say, The Great Gatsby or The Old Man and the Sea or Anna Karenina--or even any of the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard--but the stylistic flourishes in those books were never far from my mind as I read a book that has almost none of them. It didn't make the book any less enjoyable for me--Sanchez's tale is at times mesmerizing--but it did point out to me what I have come to expect from the books I read. I might call it the "overly-educated reader phenomenon." Or I could just call myself a book snob (and I have).

There were times I felt myself wishing Sanchez had used just a little more creativity in describing the pain and horror of his six years in a gang (from the age of 12 to 18). There was the occasional simile, "I drank wine like it was water," or "I ran like a crazy man," but nothing that pushed the envelope any more than that. There was nothing colorful about his descriptions or this book. And that seems to have been the point. One imagines that Sanchez would read his prose out loud as if it almost pained him to do so, but he still felt compelled to voice his experiences as if reciting "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" while working his way through the rosary. To indulge in any kind of literary flamboyance would seem, in a way, like an endorsement of the life Sanchez finally found the courage to quit.

Joss Whedon is Brilliant

And I'm not just saying that as an adoring fanboy who owns all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all five seasons of Angel, the one tragically short season of Firefly and the Lazarus-like Serenity (a movie based on the too-soon-cancelled TV show Firefly) on DVD. I'm saying that as a fanboy, English teacher, and as-yet-amateur-but-someday-professional writer who listens with rapt attention when Joss Whedon pontificates about the process and art of telling a story. OK, so, by his own admission, Whedon isn't so great at "sensitive family drama." He is a creature of genre. But the man knows how to put a story together. Almost every audio commentary he has ever done--for Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Serenity--is a veritable list of best practices for storytelling. And he drops some more pearls of wisdom in this interview by Marvel Comics scribe Brian Bendis for Wizard, the comic industry magazine.

Sure, much of what Whedon and Bendis discuss will fly right over the heads on non-Whedonphiles, but still, the moments when Whedon talks about writing should speak to anyone who has ever put pen to paper.

Impressions of a Bloody Life

Everything in My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, by Reymundo Sanchez, is everything I quit teaching for CPS to get away from.

At the time Sanchez was attending Clemente High School on Chicago’s West Side, in the early 1970’s, the Latin Kings were the biggest Puerto Rican gang in Chicago. Perhaps it still is. At the very least, it’s active. I’m sure I had students who were either members or closely affiliated with the gang.

The book is a frank and unvarnished memoir of gang life. Sanchez writes:

My Bloody Life is by no means a justification for gang involvement or gang crime. It is not an attempt to glorify any one gang or its members’ actions. Nor is it intended in any way as the confession of one person’s crimes. My Bloody Life is the story of a lifestyle and the destruction it creates.

I’m only 40 pages into it, and already Sanchez has described a world so alien from my experience that it seems unreal. I don’t want to believe that someone’s mother could beat her son as often and with as much amoral indifference as Sanchez’s mother beat him. I cannot comprehend being so afraid of my uncaring mother and my raging stepfather that I would routinely hide under my bed just to escape the beatings. And that’s just Sanchez’s home life. He feels more comfortable on the streets, where he is beginning to realize that people get shot with alarming frequency, just for belonging to a rival gang, or for no apparent reason at all.

As I read, I think about the students I left behind when I quit my job teaching on the South Side. I have to take Sanchez’s word that what he is describing is accurate and truthful, and I don’t know with certainty how much of his story applies to my students’ lives, but based on what I remember seeing and hearing and feeling every day when I walked into my school, I get the impression that Sanchez could be telling the life story of almost any one of my students.

Reading about it is almost as depressing and frustrating as seeing the surface of it every day.

Something I just learned: it seems Old-English style letters are a hallmark of the Latin Kings. One of my brightest and sweetest students (even if she rarely came to school) was in the habit of drawing Old English letters—entire alphabets—on her notebooks. She was quite a talented artist. Her letters were good. Now I can’t help but wonder at her interest in Old English letters.

Reading this book is like driving past a terrible car wreck—it’s grisly and disturbing, but at the same time so fascinating that I can’t look away. I knew of this book from other CPS teachers, but I’m reading it now because one of my community college students wrote about it in her reading journal—it’s one of her favorite books.

Anna vs. Conan

In a straight-up fight, who would win: Conan . . . or Anna Karenina?

OK, that was a trick question: Conan's sense of barbaric chivalry prevents him from taking arms against women (unless, of course, they are angry Amazons out to flay the skin from his bones), so the fight I proposed in the first sentence would never actually happen, especially since Anna would be too caught up in her doomed love affair with Vronsky to take Conan seriously.

Still, when it comes to which character wins when I want a little comfort reading, you'd think it would be Conan--the stories are straightforward, uncomplicated adventure yarns; "Anna Karenina" is a profound tale of a passionate love so intense it consumes its participants.

But lately, Anna is winning.

I don't just like a story for its plot--I also pay attention to the style of the writing. I notice how long the paragraphs are, how detailed the descriptions are, how deep into the characters's thoughts we get to delve, and a million other minute details of authorial signature. Tolstoy and Howard both have styles appropriate to their subject matter: Tolsoty paints detailed, psychologically nuanced pictures of his characters and their surroundings; Howard's prose is as lithe and sinewy as his massively-muscled main character.

My problem with the Conan book I just finished, Conan the Buccaneer, is that Robert E. Howard didn't write it. L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter collaborated on this novel as a way of filling in some gaps in the timeline left by Howard's original stories. It has all of the trappings of Conan--a beautiful and strong-willed princess in peril, sinister socerers, dark magic, fearsome creatures, stunning swordplay, and magnificent displays of machismo . . . but the prose just doesn't have the same resonance as Howard's. The tale is all action, no heart. Sure, I still read it. I have a weakness for heroic fantasy. But lately, "Anna Karenina" has been the more satisfying read--even as an escape.