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:
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.
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.
posted by Christopher at 9:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home