God's Gangs: Barrio Ministry, Masculinity, and Gang Recovery
Edward Orozco Flores
Abstract
Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles' eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality. For a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as the book argues, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be ... More
Los Angeles is the epicenter of the American gang problem. Rituals and customs from Los Angeles' eastside gangs, including hand signals, graffiti, and clothing styles, have spread to small towns and big cities alike. Many see the problem with gangs as related to urban marginality. For a Latino immigrant population struggling with poverty and social integration, gangs offer a close-knit community. Yet, as the book argues, gang members can be successfully redirected out of gangs through efforts that change the context in which they find themselves, as well as their notions of what it means to be a man. The book illuminates how Latino men recover from gang life through involvement in urban, faith-based organizations. Drawing on participant observation and interviews with Homeboy Industries, a Jesuit-founded non-profit that is one of the largest gang intervention programs in the country, and with Victory Outreach, a Pentecostal ministry with over six hundred chapters, the book demonstrates that organizations such as these facilitate recovery from gang life by enabling gang members to reinvent themselves as family men and as members of their community. The book offers a window into the process of redefining masculinity. It shows that gang members are not trapped in a cycle of poverty and marginality, and with the help of urban ministries, such men construct a reformed barrio masculinity to distance themselves from gang life.
Keywords:
Los Angeles,
American gangs,
gang rituals,
urban marginality,
Latino men,
Homeboy Industries,
intervention program,
Victory Outreach,
masculinity
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2013 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781479850099 |
| Published to NYU Press Scholarship Online: March 2016 |
DOI:10.18574/nyu/9781479850099.001.0001 |
