Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. by Luis J. Rodríguez

4 reviews

hawk_just_hawk's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

4.0

An excellent first-person account of how oppressive systems and structures create poverty and crime. Sociologically: Chef’s kiss!

Toxic masculinity and ableism are deeply entrenched in this lifestyle, so approach with caution. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Addiction, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Colonisation, Sexual violence, Suicide, Vomit, Drug abuse, Drug use, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Alcohol, Bullying, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Confinement, Murder, Physical abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Toxic friendship, Violence, Classism, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, and Death

iread2dream's review

slow-paced

4.5

Luis has a way with words. The way he describes things, whether it's an emotion, a place, a person, an experience, really takes you to that emotion, place, person, or experience as if you were there. This book hit home for many reasons. I grew in the barrios. It was nowhere near as bad as what Luis went through but it wasn't rainbows and sunshine. Luis did a great job of outlining the inadequacies that lead children to be 'gang bangers.' We want to belong, to feel safe, to be cared for, and sometimes we can't find that at home or at school. By whatever stroke of magic or luck, some of us that grew up in those conditions somehow avoided joining a gang. We did not live through the 'gang life' but we witnessed it from the sidelines. The violence. The drugs. Perhaps it was what Luis and the Chicanos of that time went through that we now reap the benefits of what they sowed, what they fought for. That we were able to stand on their shoulders and know that we could get out and be something from the time we were children.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence

Minor: Rape and Sexual assault

poopsock's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Violence, Sexual assault, Rape, Racism, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Drug abuse, Classism, Self harm, and Suicidal thoughts

joyblue's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

1.5

I took special note of a single sentence in the Prologue and pretty much the entire Epilogue. Everything in between, I could have done without—they are graphic. [We could have greater discussion on the point of this, but not right now.] 

The parts I mention expose inequity and lack of social justice. The rest was a brutal account of the author's life, which is, after all, what one expects in a memoir. I'm not into memoirs, typically, and it wasn't why I was interested in this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Gun violence, Sexual violence, Violence, Sexual assault, and Sexual content