Why Teenagers Join Gangs - Book Report/Review Example

An Overview of Why Teenagers Join Gangs An Overview of Why Teenagers Join Gangs In the year 2002, Jorja Leap began a research on gang violence in Los Angeles. She came about innumerable proposed answers to the gang problems that seemed intractable in her pursuit to find out what precisely was happening. The elements of danger, both previously and currently could not go any higher. In every three hours there has to be a report of the murder of a child or adolescent by gunfire. She discovered that the reason for the untold deaths of African American males in the age bracket of between fifteen and thirty four was homicide (Allen et al., 1975). In her book, Jumped In, Leap makes an attempt to narrate the tales that influence statistics as well as astonishing media images to the actual lives of those bound by and attempting to evade la Vida loca.With an anthropologist’s perception and a compassionate heart, the strong University of California, LA (UCLA) social welfare professor travels through a few of the violent-most and dearth-stricken localities in the cruisers plus choppers of the law enforcement agency obtaining relevant information from a variety of individuals ranging from drug lords and murderers to dupes and grieving mothers. It is through the verbalized accounts, private interviews in addition to onlookerexplanations of both past and present gang members as well as their counterparts that the reader understands those drawn into the bunch of hooligans alongside them that are making an effort to forge other ways of helping their communities. By probing into the private lives of the members of the gangs, the author is able to discover the reasons behind participation in addition to various techniques of dealing with gang activities affectively. She also purposes to hear the voice of the people side lined in political vibe besides learning from the frontrunners offering rekindled hope by means of community outreach programs. With the shaping of durable friendship relations with the community in question and immersion into not only the victories but also the triumphs of others, there is an intersection of Leap’s personal life with her professional existence. Her husband works in the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) and she has an adolescent daughter, providing her with a couple of family dilemma as well.Jumped In is essentially an accountof the unforeseen lessons that the writer learnt and the long-lasting impact they had on her life. This particular work of Leap is by far a favourite of many. The reasons given include the intense description provided by the book, causing most of its readers get emotionally attached to the subjects therein.Personally, I agree with the support shown. This is because aside from her passionate narration, she also makes an effort of providing an insight into a frequently unheeded aspect of a law enforcement career. She outlines part of the possible effects of the occupation and institution as a whole on the home or family life of an individual. This is a remarkable writer because of her intervention in a high-need and risk situation. The crafting of an ethnography of gang culture in LA in the literary work depicts the kind of danger she exposed herself to. There is a lot to admire about this author’s research inclusive of her novelistic style. The use of dialogue reveals the private existence of her interviewees.This mind set would be quite an interesting read. Her treatment of women inside and outside the gangs however, makes for perturbedreading. She classifies them into two taxonomies of “bitches” and “nuns”. The former refers to those women who join the illicit groups. Nuns on the other hand are the passively victimized women. Rather than exploring this duality, she adopts it. The book does not dwell so much on the nuns but only gives a brief description of how they resort to promiscuity and become impregnated by the gangs, not examining the conditions that evented in their positions such as abusive family, domestic violence, rape and so on and so forth. Even if the composer apparently seeks to be of some assistance to these individuals, it appears that her help is accompanied by an underlying judgement. The book is primarily a voice of the people who understand the gang problem best that is, gang associates, those who arrest and control them along with their helpers. As an veteran anthropologist, Leap gives a genealogy of some of the oldest and most influential brown and black gangs in Los Angeles namely; Crips, Bloods, Florencia, Eighteenth Street, MS-13 and the like. She also analyses every single one of their territories from street to the next. Marking out three previous generations of the gang members’ family hierarchies, the literature reveals the powerful influence that clan mentality has over the community combined with the depth of kinship links and states: “I loved school and had good grades. I played every sport- football, basketball, and swimming- up to Jordan High,” Ronny Dawson reminisces. But Ronny had little chance of not becoming a gang member. Born in Nickerson Gardens, a housing project in South Los Angeles, which encompasses Watts and Compton and is the birthplace of the notorious Bounty Hunter Bloods, Ronny grew up in an apartment with 29 other people. He never knew his father, who was in and out of prison, and rarely saw his mother, a crack addict. Ronny is a third-generation gang member whose family started their own offshoot of the Bounty Hunter Bloods, the Hillbilly Gangsters. “We aren’t just Bloods, this is my blood. They are my family,” he explains (Leap, 2012). The oral history alongside the personal interviews of not only the gangs and their assistants but also interventionists, priests and law enforcement officers makes public the tales and the traumas of the gang affiliates that were born into vehemence, guns, drugs even sex. The countless challenges that plague the gangs are listed as domestic disturbances, mental illnesses, post-traumatic stress disorders to mention but a few. The “home girls” (female gang members) claim to have come from noxious and abusive backgrounds and in spite of this; they are still revictimized in their respective gangs. Leap writes, “…There are stepfathers who demand blowjobs or cousins who force them to engage in anal sex…”The women narrate how their initiation process involves sex or gang rape. In one of the rumoured rites of instigation, female aspirants were once forced to engage in sexual activity with a HIV positive gang adherent.Although they go through immense suffering, the alluded to home girls still make deliberate decisions to join the crews as a means of empowerment and as a way of recovering control. For the better part of them, there is not much difference between life outside the gang and in the gang. Despite the horrid reality of the violence of life in gangster-hood, there is hope for redemption. All through the book, the author passes a lot of her time at the gang intervention and re-entry program of Father Greg Boyle, referred to as Homeboys Industries. It is here that she meets a gathering of ex-gangsters and those in the process of exiting the illegal groups; beneficiaries of Father Boyle’s project. The audience or reader also encounters Rev. Mike Cummings, popularly referred to as Big Mike, who was formerly among the pioneer gangsters. Big Mike also founded Project Fatherhood and is now a staunch advocate of peace ministries in the streets. He also functions as a father figure to the children in his neighbourhood. The transformation of the six feet tall and approximately three hundred pounds man makes it virtually impossible to believe that the once Watts disreputable gangster presently spends his time trying to redeem children from taking the menacing path he followed once upon a time. Through these observations and inferences, Leap discloses a matchless and authentic mien into a world that some dread while a few others cognize and presents a promise of hope. Literary critic, Alicia Abdul asserts that Leap’s Jumped Inis merely a street narrative woven in the depths of the author’s personal grafts and only purposes to annoy the adolescent reader through the disclosure of the stance of her convictions. Nevertheless, the compensatory attribute of the book is its organization of chapters in topics contrasted with a sequence of events in her career that sheds some light on such concerns as tattooing, female gangbangers and all that. The language in use is a little short of sterilization, serving to validate her happenstance that gets not only more and more perilous, but also directly dishevelled with the very criminals she puts questions to. The manner in which picture of culture is painted leaves the reader with a one-off prevue into this biospheric epidemic as well as respect for those personally involved in the melee. Abdul says, “…the book’s place in libraries depends mainly on the demographic it serves since both a maturity and perspective are needed to negotiate its less-than-hopeful conclusion…” Kirkus Reviews, a collection of book critiques, asserts that Leap perceives the young ‘homies’ (home boys and girls) as lost causes trying to flee destitute childhoods. She notes that there is no such thing as an archetypal gang member. In the intervening time, the LAPD has assimilated subdual with street intercession. These two approaches are questionable because they only lead to ambiguous outcomes. Furthermore, Leap largely relies on her cerebral open-heartedness coupled with her individual connections to carry her through the voluminous dangerous circumstances. As in the documentary, The Interrupters, her chief focus is on the interventionists; this refers to the reformed Mafiosi who try to curb street vehemence. Even though her personalized methodology sometimes leads to loss of concentration with regard to her extensive sociological narrative of contemporary gangs, Leap’s work is vibrant and amenable. It is also imbued with the originality of hard-earned proficiency; “…an impassioned, disturbing and not terribly optimistic account of a continuing American crisis…” Linda Sherman, a literary reviewer and third generation native Los Angelino, asserts that Jumped In does not deliver. Leap self-congratulates herself a lot throughout the book. As if this is not enough, she writes about the boy Ronny who is unable to leave his gang because they are his kin and is all he has: “In a parallel universe, only a rich white (non-brown) woman lives in, she finds comparison with Ronny to her close-knit Greek family upbringing!... Mrs. Leap, you really need a lesson in humility…” Instead of writing subjectively, the author is rather self-centred and pursues similarities (Arnaudet et al., 1984). The Women’s Literary Festival nonetheless, seems to have a different perception of Leap. They describe her as an international connoisseur when it comes to crisis intervention particularly in the line of social work. The institution terms her book as a remarkable genealogy of the most influential families in Los Angeles. With a PhD in psychological anthropology, Leap brings out the analysis in a comprehensive and exceptional manner. She was nominated for the eighth annual Women’s Literary Festival alongside such sensational female authors as Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising, Helen Benedict known for The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq and Attica Locke with The Cutting Session to mention but a few. The WLF was established in the year 2004 by volunteers from Santa Barbara County to celebrate female writers as well as their distinct life experiences. The presentations of the nominees create an opportunity to build the community, advance the voice of women, promote an erudite culture and commemorate authors and readers that perform their respective roles with the objective of developing individual lives in addition to the sense of the community. On the 10th day of October in the year 2011, UCLA professor Jorja Leap crafted an amazing if not troubling ethnographic exploration of LA gangsterhood. She goes after her vassals as they strive to be clean and avoid the streets, their reversions and such initiatives as Homeboys industries, a communal rehabilitation institution for gang affiliates, which according to her, could prove to be a lasting and definitely inexpensive resolution to gang violence, rather than incarceration. The mosaic-like organizational sequence is a trait to marvel at in this piece of literary writing besides its aforesaid novelistic style. The use of dialogue strategically conveys the interviewees’ inner lives.Be that as it may, Leap undeniably places herself as well as her privilege with regard to her subjects; the book is like a shaggy dog story of Dangerous Minds. When this author commenced her exploration of street gang vehemence in the year 2002, her objective was more to discover what was happening and the doers of the deeds than providing solutions. In her period of study she gained the trust of her entrants, being in the same room with them, standing by their side in crime scenes and driving past the housing developments. Initially, the person reading the book is able to comprehend the geography of the land that is, genealogy in conjunction with the natural features of the gangs with their sub-gangs as well as the regions within regions. The centrepiece of this work conversely, is the real stories of the la Vida locas along with the encounters of the pursuers of improved living. Told in a forthright first-person speech, Leap introduces her audience to gangland denizens like Tray. Tray is a young father making an effort to mend his ways but is taken out by a bullet in the process. There are also the likes of Joanna, a thirdcohort female gangster, who tells of how she barred her mother to take up the business of selling drugs in the presence of her granddaughter. The reader also gets to witness the success of the ‘Jobs not Jail’ Homeboys program and come to know that former gang members could do well in acceptable professions such as fire fighting, paramedics et cetera, habituated in chancy settings just like them. Leap has been an UCLA member since 1992. She is a trained anthropologist and a renowned veteran in issues of crisis intervention as well as trauma response, having worked both nationally and internationally in ferocious, post-war environments. Also attributable to her proficiency in qualitative investigation as well as ethnographic techniques, Prof. Leap has succeeded in conducting quite a large number of assessments of anti-gang initiatives, the likes of LA Unity Collaborative Gang Intervention Program, Oakland Youth Uprising and so forth. The year was a significant milestone in Leap’s career because it was during this time that she and her counterpart, Dr. Todd Franke, were awarded funding by the Dora Haynes and John Randolph foundation to start a two-year comprehensive analysis of the Homeboys Industry. In addition to Jumped In, Leap has authored more literature including evaluation reports, book chapters, articles etc. Just recently, she worked on a chapter about gang membership, which is to be published by the National Institute of Justice in collaboration with the Centre for Disease Control and another by the Oxford University Press. Jumped In is her most recent publication; one whose proceeds she says will be donated to the Homeboys Industries. Presently, Prof. Leap is working on her next book that centres on Project Fatherhood in addition to the Watts community. References Allen, E. D., & Colbrunn, E. B. (1975). A short guide to writing a critical review. Deland, Fla: Everett/Edwards. Arnaudet, M.L. and Barrett, M.E. (1984). Approaches to Academic Reading and Writing. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Leap, J. (2012). Jumped in: What gangs taught me about violence, drugs, love, and redemption. Boston: Beacon Press. Read More